Month: April 2019

Posted on

Saturday Getaway

Ben and I both needed a break and to get outside our own heads for a while, so yesterday we headed south to Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson.




































The Air and Space Museum has always been a favorite destination of mine for photography; the stark desert light, the contrast between sea and sand, and of course the brilliant colors of the aircraft themselves set against those backgrounds.

Posted on

Shower Thoughts

The fact that billionaires have pledged over 600 million dollars in under 24 hours to help fix the Norte Dame landmark really puts into perspective how easily the insanely rich could help solve world problems if they cared to.

Posted on

Quote of the Day

Notre Dame is on fire and the stupidest fucking asshole on the entire planet just can't help but offer idiotic useless advice because this drooling moron imagines himself a fucking expert on everything. He's the loudmouth drunk at the end of the bar, but with nuclear weapons." ~ Jeff Tiedrich

Posted on

Shower Thoughts

If a stranger asks you what time it is, it's kind of annoying. If a stranger asks you what year it is, it's mildly concerning. If a stranger asks you what century it is, it's extremely exciting.

Posted on

Something to Remember

Yesterday, from jonphaedrus on Tumblr:

Notre Dame is burning.

This is ok.

It has happened before. It will happen again. It has been lost before. It will be lost again. And again. And again. And again. Art and architecture are transient, and temporary, and 850 years may seem like a lot to the individual, who will live maybe 100 if they are very lucky and very healthy, but even the pyramids at Saqqara have only existed for about 6000 years and that's still not all that much, if you consider the grand scheme of things.

Yes, this is terrible. As someone who is deeply religious and literally a professional historian with a focus on art and architecture, this is terrible. I'm mourning. I'm gutted. I'm horrified and upset and miserable. But.

It's not over.

Victor Hugo wrote Hunchback because Notre Dame du Paris was in the process of collapsing and falling apart, and revitalized the entire world's focus and love for this church, and that was not even 200 years ago. It led to it being renovated.

The roof has fallen in. The scars of fires are on its buttresses. The rose window has fallen out. The beams and piers have collapsed. The spire has toppled. The stones have suffered, and will suffer again, but it is not gone.

Renovation work is essential. sometimes things collapse and burn and break and have to come back. It's not a terrorist attack, it's renovation, an accident, but we have so much evidence, history, carefully documented everything on one of the most studied places in the world.

It's not the end.

Obviously everyone is shocked but here's a few important key facts:

•      The roof is completely gone. Part of it dated back from the 13th century but the rest was from the 19th. The stone arch roof under the top roof is fine.

•     One of the three main stained glass rose windows has fallen out. Most of the other stained glass windows are okay.

•     The spire has fallen down and that's the saddest part. BUT! It was in the process of being restored and the 16 statues that were there were removed just four days ago! So they're fine.

•     The main structure is still here and nothing has "burned down" unlike what some people have been saying.

•     The "treasures" (the sacred objects) are safe.

•     Notre Dame is still there. It's just damaged. Almost nothing was lost today, and nobody was wounded either. It's scary, but it's gonna be okay.

Notre Dame is still there. It's just damaged. Almost nothing was lost today, and nobody was hurt, either. It's scary, but it's gonna be okay.

Remember that a good deal of the cathedral is stone, so it isn't going to burn to the ground. Part of the genius of medieval architecture before steel was the invention of the buttress, the arch that allows weight to be taken off walls so you could use more glass. Unfortunately the glass will melt but it's easy to replace. It unquestionably will be massively damaged but not destroyed.

Posted on

Pruning

I stopped following 300+ Twitter accounts tonight, basically anything or anyone political. I'd reached the point that I had to do something, and short of canceling my account altogether (believe me, I thought about it), I figured this might be a good stopgap measure to keep the relentless flood of negativity from consuming me.

I read this afternoon that Instagram has become the latest hotbed of activity for Nazis and right-wing supremacists, which is sad because I still genuinely like the Insta, but I may be faced with saying goodbye to that sooner rather than later since the company seems uninterested in or incapable of policing their service to keep that sort of garbage from posting. Nazi propaganda is fine, but put up an exposed penis and they're on you within minutes. Go figger.

 

Posted on

The Exaltation of Anger

…More and more lately I'm finding social media to be complete garbage.

It's not the trolls, bots, religious nuts, right-wing nuts, and fanatical Stormtrumpers who spew hate and insanity in my face every day. I expect that and it doesn't bother me. Much.

Or rather it's not JUST that.

No, it's the other side. The Tone Police, the Purity Patrol, the Social Justice suicide bombers willing to die on every goddamned hill, the self-appointed Editors who want to argue over every single word, the tedious pedants, and the guy who screams "BOT!" in response to every comment.

More than anything it's the smug self-righteous left-wing gatekeepers who show up to every post with "do better."

I hate that fucking phrase.

Do better. No. Fuck you. No one should have to put up with that condescending bullshit. As soon as I see "do better" or any variation, out the airlock you go.

It's not about disagreement. Or even about reasonable criticism. All of us should be able to handle that.

It's about ENTITLEMENT.

It's about those who see the rest of us as objects to be OWNED, improved, edited, managed, controlled, silenced and redirected. It's about dancing monkeys. More and more I get why people leave this place. I totally get why celebrities like Wil Wheaton left Twitter completely, just dumped 4 million followers and walked away. He couldn't take it, it was literally destroying his mental health. I totally get that, because lately my various timelines are becoming for me an increasing source of irritation and frustration. Rage. It's affecting me in the real world. It's making me angry all of the time.

…I'm not going to leave, not here, not Twitter, not Instagram, or Counter.Social, not yet anyway. But I AM going to start cleaning house a LOT more vigorously and without warning. I have to, to maintain my sanity.

If you don't want to get blown out of the airlock, then maybe give some thought to how your comments might be affecting others.

Thanks."

Read the entire piece here. It's well worth your time.

Posted on

Dealing With Our Collective Trip Through Hell


I'm trying to be more patient with people these days. I really am. I don't always succeed (yesterday was a prime example), but I am trying to be more mindful of it.

What prompted this? A passage from The Palmer Report:

We, the American people, are in hell. It's been the case to varying degrees since the day Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election. These past couple weeks it's been even more startlingly the case than ever. Trump falsely exonerated himself, and he's now pushing his ongoing crime spree to entirely new depths. His top lieutenants are drunk with power and acting like cartoon villains. This has been an awful stretch.

This brought into very sharp focus the fact that it's not just me, or Ben, or my friends and family who feel we've slipped into an alternate reality where everything is awful and seemingly getting worse by the day. No, it made me realize that our entire fucking country—or at least the 70% or so who think the Orange Menace needs to be forcibly excised from the White House—is feeling the same frustration that I am that his crime spree and thumbing-his-nose at the Rule of Law is being allowed to continue unabated.

Subpoenas to obtain the entire Mueller Report? His taxes? His financial records? Well and good, but subpoenas aren't magic bullets that will open a trap door and send Trump directly into the not-so-loving arms of Impeachment (something that will never happen with the wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia, Inc.® Republican Senate in any case).  It is going to take months or years for the subpoena process to wind its way through courts that are being increasingly stacked in Trump's favor, so forgive me for not feeling overly optimistic at the outcome. (Funny how they can't actually approve any legislation but sure as hell can get all those judicial vacancies filled post haste with right wing nutjobs, isn't it?)

Add to this anger and frustration, everyone you see is suffering through some kind of personal drama.  Everyone. It may not be your drama, or even something you would consider drama, but it is real to that particular person just as yours is to you. So it pays to be kind and patient, even if that person is acting like a demon from hell. (They may in fact be demons from hell, or at least skinsuit-wearing Reptilians from Zeta Reticulii, but give them the benefit of the doubt and try to treat them like human beings.)

And we all have our coping mechanisms. I buy vinyl records that I listen to maybe a half dozen times, Instagram, and then file away on the "new arrivals" portion of the shelf to be played maybe once or twice more. Ben immerses himself in all things RuPaul's Drag Race (he's my resident expert) and games on his phone. Some people meditate. Some people get involved in the community. Other people cope in less-healthy ways.

Point is, showing more kindness toward each other and allowing for each other's quirks and coping mechanisms is the only way we're going to make it through this shit show until rational, sane adults who aren't beholden to Vladmir Putin are once again in control of this country.

Posted on

Quote of the Day

Preach, sister!

So many guys claim to have 10-11 inch dicks that it makes me think they need to start learning how to measure them correctly.

Newsflash: your penis doesn't start from your butthole!

Also, whilst we're on the topic, some of you need to learn very quickly that a 6 inch dick is NOT small. Despite what porn has conditioned you to believe, It's not supposed to the the size of your forearm." ~ Nick