BURLINGTON, WISCONSIN
Before leaving Urbana, my daughter told me she had something to show me. She drove me to this house and stopped. I gasped with wonder. The wooden roof was layered in a wave pattern that was impossible to ignore.
I installed my first tag at my daughter's.
When we are on the road, I am the pilot and my wife is the navigator.
I strongly suspect (in another attempt to drive me crazy) that she checks the weather and directs me to purposefully drive through every thunderstorm in the state. When she finds heavy rain, wind AND road construction, she considers it a trifecta.
We are now staying in a motel that proudly advertises that they were voted the Number Two motel in Burlington. Come to find out, there are only three motels in Burlington.
We have the expensive items (computers, etc) in the back seat. Coolers, lawn chairs, etc go in the back. But because they need to be laid on a flat surface, my hats are put in the back also. I pointed this out to my wife, with a demand that great care should be taken with these items.
Today at the motel I took a nap. When I awoke I went to get a beer out of the cooler. The cooler is as big as a coffin. When I opened the lid to the truck, the hat on top of the cooler was squished flat.
I rest my case.
There is no smoking in any motel room in Wisconsin.
Dear fellow Americans, why would the state care if a portion of the rooms was set aside for smokers only?
I will state again, I can't wait until the government (for your own good) starts denying you fatty foods, sugary drinks, violent video games, cars that can exceed the speed limit, etc. I can't wait to hear you when Big Brother (Nanny) takes away something you enjoy.
And ladies, what if the government decides to ban all make-up that had ever used animal research?
AN OBSERVATION FROM THE HINTERLAND...
When
I’m bored I like sitting outside my motel room staring at the back of the
restaurant that always seems to be located directly in front of my door, a mere
stone’s throw away. I watch as young, short-skirted high school drop outs come
out back and sit on milk crates next to the smelly dumpsters to enjoy a smoke
break. They never look around at the comings and goings of guests. They never
look up at the clouds or stars. They only stare at their cigarettes or down at
the asphalt, probably yet again regretting that junior year Motel 6 after the
prom that left her with a child that their hated mommas are now tending because
they can’t afford a baby sitter.
That’s
why I always over-tip small town waitresses.
The Scarecrow may not have a brain, but he's not the bitch who got lost when there's only one road.
This is a very attractive photo...are is it?
It is so easy to manipulate digital photographs that you never know if it's what the photographer actually so or the results of pushing the right buttons.
My jury is still out on the whole issue.
My jury is still out on the whole issue.
DAMN!
These people are using that huge mirror thing to create a disaster...
My son-in-law and I had a long conversation of places like this and the generations upon generations of people who were born and died here...
FOUR OF A KIND, STRAIGHT FLUSH
I was in a poker game with my good friend, Tommy. I had four of a kind and bet accordingly. It was just he and I left in the game when I looked at his up cards and said, "What the fuck are you betting on?" He said, "Straight flush." I again looked at his up cards and said, "If you have a straight flush, I will kiss your ass."
He had a straight flush. He jumped up, dropped his pants and underwear and stuck his naked ass in my face.
This is what I looked like.
I was in a poker game with my good friend, Tommy. I had four of a kind and bet accordingly. It was just he and I left in the game when I looked at his up cards and said, "What the fuck are you betting on?" He said, "Straight flush." I again looked at his up cards and said, "If you have a straight flush, I will kiss your ass."
He had a straight flush. He jumped up, dropped his pants and underwear and stuck his naked ass in my face.
This is what I looked like.
Back when everyone was cool...
I think we need to call up our local airports and page Edward Snowden, just to see if we get a visit from the FBI.
Building used to be constructed to last. Early in this country's history we made government shit out of granite and such. Now we cover a flimsy frame with stuccoed Styrofoam and form it just to look like the old strong buildings...
Hard to believe that, as recently as 1980, "those American thighs" was considered a compliment.
I'd like to wish a Happy Ramadan to all the people who will still be observing Ramadan a month after I forget it's Ramadan. But it's kind of cool that you have a religion with a built-in weight-loss program.
I always try to sell drugs to the religious people who show up at my door.
CONDOM MACHINE WIRED TO SIREN AND FLASHING LIGHTS
I watched a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton and Laura Dern...."Daddy & Them". Here's a couple of line from it...
After a head-on collision he was asked how much he had had to drink...
The last thing he saw before the homicide....
I want his job...
3 comments:
""It is so easy to manipulate digital photographs that you never know if it's what the photographer actually so or the results of pushing the right buttons."
Can't one use lenses, filters, and stops to change the nature of a film image? Can't one dodge, burn, mask, crop, and composite film with an enlarger and then trim, color and/or creatively mat the prints? Why can't one push the right buttons to take the right image and push the right buttons to edit it in the best way?
Surely a good jury is more concerned with whether there's meaningful craftsmanship involved in a process than whether a process can involve craftsmanship per se. Digital editing can be an "art" just as much as taking a naturally well-framed photo can be.
The best photographers don't usually carry lenses to suit every situation, and even when they do they often encounter snap situations in which a lens can't be changed out. Thus we have situations in which the best eyes are "reduced" to editing, but still some of the best images ever captured emerge from such circumstances.
Surely the nature of an idea/object (i.e. the notions and feelings it evokes) matters more than its style, genre or medium. I think medium-obsession (as opposed to nature obsession) tends to be bad for the same reason that fundamentalist religious ideas are bad (they can blind one to nuance and subtlety, see e.g. my reaction to your gaming quip).
By the by, have you ever been up to Door County? I liked it up there. I took the ferry across Death's Door to Washington Island once and spent a day idly roaming around. Lovely piney country up there. I tend to prefer Superior's craggier shores (e.g. Porcupine Mountains) but Michigan from WI is still beautiful.
I have used the same argument to convince people photography was, in fact, an art form.
I think I'm confused in that so many people are so ignorant about what they are looking at. Primarily, a person (usually already famous) paints a painting, then photographs it and prints out 9 or 10 million images using the same process as an advertisement in a magazine. The question is: Is that art? Or is it a bastardization of art?
Further, if you can sit at a console and pull up an image, manipulate it no matter how cleverly and call it art, then I have to be educated about the....human part again.
I figured you probably had; my high-school art teacher said more or less the same thing (I was his assistant for a couple years). That's why I used that rhetoric! Just apply the same logic to digital editing. There are people who are very skillful at it and there are hacks, just as there are skillful and hack film photographers.
wrt whether popularized things are art: they can be! Is anything about e.g. Game of Thrones or the Walking Dead artful? I would say yes, but those franchises have sold millions of units. It's (sadly) common for people to reject popular things out of hand as having been made popular merely by "selling out" or whatever, but that strikes me as sour grapes. Artfulness and popularity aren't the same thing; there's popular and unpopular art and popular and unpopular non-art.
If you can sit down with some chisels and pull up a block of marble, manipulate it no matter how cleverly and call it art...
:)
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