Month: June 2012

I’m going to something called The Big Sing later, and I need my camera, damnit. This event must be documented. I know there are those who say if you’re photographing what you’re doing you’re not really experiencing what you’re doing, but for those of us who love photography, capturing the moment in this way is part of living it.

This is Buddy asking for food (always a good thing these days). It’s an ichat screen grab, all I have these days.

Oh god. They just called this second. They can’t repair my camera and they have to send it to Canon and it will take a few weeks. Alright, that was a hard blow, in the realm of blows that are not really hard blows at all. (A diagnosis of a terminal illness is a real hard blow.) I had planned to do my author photo on Wednesday. At this point my camera won’t even be back before my author photo is due. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

The conductors from the big sing last year:

I’ve known about the Prelinger Archives for many years, but I wasn’t aware of just how much of their collection was available online! It’s a treasure trove! I just watched the Coney Island one and caught a glimpse of Pip and Flip, who I always thought were Zip and Pip. From the Coney Island website:

“Pip and Flip were twins who were often advertised as coming from the Yucatan of Mexico (although sometimes also from Australia). They were actually born in New York and the sisters ‘real’ names were Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow. They suffered from the birth defect of microcephaly which contributed to their “pinhead” physicality. They often worked in Coney Island side shows during the 1930’s. They appeared in the 1933 MGM movie Freaks, directed by Tod Browning.”

There’s a film defending the WWII internment of Japanese Americans, another called Symptoms in Schizophrenia, which “Shows masked mental patients enacting various schizophrenic symptoms as they were understood at the time. A disturbing film that raises questions about the condition and treatment of its subjects.”

Seriously, you need to explore what they offer. My post doesn’t even begin to cover what they have there. Yikes! I have to leave for swimming!

But please read his article about this month’s Rio+20 summit, which I have just heard about for the first time, which is a problem right there. From the piece:

Among the report’s “low-lights” are:

– air pollution indoors and outdoors is probably causing more than six million premature deaths each year.

– greenhouse gas emissions are on track to warm the world by at least 3C on average by 2100.

– most river basins contain places where drinking water standards are below World Health Organization standards.

It’s a short article. It takes a minute to read.

Another thing that is freaking me out now—gamma ray bursts. These are the result of explosions in space. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comment about gamma ray bursts possibly happening nearby:

“I don’t want to be around for that day.”

I was watching a show called Last Days on Earth, and according to how it was depicted on the program, the worst part was that death from a nearby gamma ray burst would not necessarily be instantaneous. It looked like we’d all be slowly cooked to death, and I actually spent time trying to figure out how I would kill the cats and myself to end our suffering more quickly. I could jump off the roof, but the cats could survive that.

So yeah. Have a nice weekend!

I first noticed it, I think, when people started saying “I’m going to prom,” or “what about prom, Blaine??” (from Pretty in Pink). Not the prom, just prom. The other day people were saying Prince Philip is in hospital. Not the hospital, or a hospital, just hospital.

Why is this okay?

I am still without a working camera. These are a couple of old pictures. First up a house finch on my fire escape. I fell in love with him, but he never even looked my way. He just flew off and I haven’t seen him since.

These are pigeons in a nearby park, which has since been totally redone, it doesn’t look like this anymore. They probably wouldn’t stand for this mass of pigeons in the sparkly new park.

I thought I would have my camera back by today, at the latest. But the parts that came in didn’t work and so now I have to wait for replacement parts for the replacement parts. Then, my cellphone broke. I’m going broke fixing broken things.

Wait a minute. What the hell is going on with my arm in this photograph?? I have stick arms, I swear. That’s Finney, by the way. Monster-cat of Perry Street. This is a screenshot from ichat.

Has anyone tried Airtime yet? It’s a video chat service started by the Napster guys. I signed up for it on Facebook, but then I was too afraid to hit “Talk to Someone.”

I invited a friend to do it with me, someone I don’t mind seeing me … not at my best. But it doesn’t work in Safari. I had to switch to Google Chrome, and he only had Safari. I’m trying to think of fun things I can do to promote my singing book and Airtime is one of the things I’m exploring.

Here I am, offering proof that I have stick arms, in spite of all the swimming. Notice the closed mouth smile in my pictures? I don’t like how my smile looks now. I hope when all my dental work is done I have a pretty smile again.