Since the crack started on the windshield of the little farm truck, I've been putting off replacing it until it got so bad I felt I had to. But today's payday, so I called around and found I can get OEM Ford glass installed out-the-door for $165. I'd expected more. Much more. I expect that this won't be tinted, like my original was, but given the laws here in California, not much tinting is allowed of the windshield anyway. Edit: It was tinted - an identical replacement! I would like to tint the rear window to 80% though, as there are no restrictions on that and following headlights really annoy me.

That will leave getting new ball joints as the remaining thing I'll want prior to the next trip, now planned for April to Minnesota for my mother's 80th birthday. They're not unsafe, but as the last alignment seems to have been bad, doing that at the same time makes some sense. Or maybe I'll just have the tires rotated.

The economy seems to have calmed down for now and earnings statements are mostly positive. That's no guarantee things will remain rational, but it's the best sign in a long time. I'm not willing to concede a recession yet. That might be wishful thinking, but I've lived through two big ones while supporting a family and really didn't like them one bit. Anyway, this time my own industry seems to be doing very well, so there's no indication of any pending direct hit against aerospace, unlike the other two times. We'll have to just see how it goes and adapt.

And the presidential campaigns continue to entertain. More people seem to be distancing themselves from the disingenuous Clintons, and more also seem to be recognizing that Senator McCain is the rare honorable man. Frankly, I hate to see the "debates" turn into he-said/she-said squabbles and wish McCain would stay above that silliness, but, embarrassingly, that seems to be how it's done these days. I don't even care who started it - the next president shouldn't play that game. John, if you're reading this, please ignore the barbs and show some class.

This is Jackie, showing some ass. Man, that way I've got of pulling stupid parallels out in the last paragraph sometimes backfires, huh?

In McCain's speech last night he made claim to being a "conservative Republican." I concur. McCain used the word "conservative" in it's real and original meaning, rather than in the newspeak version loaded with references to abortion, religion, war and welfare.

In it's simplest form "conservative" means "sceptical of change." Not necessarily resistant to change, but inclined to examine the implications before making changes. Thing is, you see, that Bush & Co. are the farthest thing from "conservative," having made fiat changes to accepted Constitutional rights, fiat changes to foreign policy, to government balance of power, to incorporation of "faith-based" orgainizations into government policy, and on and on.

But that sort of heresy now defines "conservative" in the public mind. And it is a false definition. It is actually closer to, though not congruent with, "fascism." While Romney and Clinton were telling everyone how the government would help them, McCain was telling folks that they can take care of themselves if the government just gets out of the way and lets them. That is traditional conservatism.

On a silly note, it gives me a giggle that Romney, the seasoned businessman, thinks he'll get political support by telling folks he knows how to run a business and will get them their jobs back. It's people like Romney, the executives, who do the mass layoffs and outsourcings to save a nickel. What laid off worker would ever trust someone like him? The blow-dried executive is anathema to the guy on the production line or in the cubicle. Doesn't he read Dilbert?

Yes, this is Angela again. Why change when you've got a good thing going?

Currently, I'm reading "Profiteer" by S. Andrew Swann. It's a space opera and part of a three-book series, all following the overly adventurous life of a remarkable, thouroughly unbelievable, protagonist. There's a backstory going on in which "The Confederacy" (of planets, naturally) is, by its own rules, going to become dominated by a new Indo-Asian majority, displacing the old Euro-American majority. The backstory manuevering is more interesting than the shoot-'em-up parts.

Coincidentally, there's a story in the NYTimes today about the inevitable upcoming loss of American power to European and Indo-Asian, etc. combines and the mechanics of how this is happening around us while we (the U.S.) continue to pursue antique policies. (One interesting note in the introduction mentioned that there are now more choreographers in the U.S. than ironworkers.)

The mechanics of each depicted power shift are similar. Swann wrote his book in 1995, and so was more prescient or perhaps more willing to make a prediction than the Gray Lady is.

So, is the U.S. going to sink back to Second World status? Will Europe, China or India become top dog? Will we become a mere labor exporter to more powerful economies?

This is, of course, Angela. I photographed her in Newfoundland, Canada awhile back. She is swiftly becoming my long-distance muse.

When I was first posted to the Philippines around 1976 after a tour in Japan, I found a tailor and had him make me a "safari suit." What I had in mind of course was something I'd seen in a movie - matching trousers and jacket made of cream-colored cotton or linen-cotton blend, with pockets everywhere. To my young eyes, that would be the epitome of sophistication for a U.S. Marine lieutenant stationed in the tropics.

Unfortunately, Filipinos don't necessarily have the same movies, so the suit came out with huge lapels in some kind of slippery cotton and had trouser cuffs! Cuffs ... on a safari suit! Too late to change the material, but the cuffs and lapels were sort of remedied and I wore that gawdawful suit proudly a couple of times until peer review convinced me to burn it.

That said, at that particular duty station in those days the uniform for guards was made up of random combinations of white leather gear, pith helmets, Bermuda shorts and other oddities depending on the season. The Marines, you know, are Anglophile to the core, being in our mind a continuation of the traditions of the Royal Marines. The Royal Marines may disagree. This also meant that on various occasions, i.e. Dining In, we ate roast beef every time. Beats being Fracophiles and choking down escargot I guess. I've still got that Marine Corps-issued pith helmet as a memento of sillier days.

This is Ashley wearing my Vanson bike jacket. I've still got that jacket too, but sixty thousand miles of high-speed weather has taken its toll and it's beginning to stiffen and crack. But I'll keep it too as a memento of happy times.

For those of you that decided I'd done the responsible thing - wrong again, Sherlock! A model I've wanted to shoot got back to me last night just under the wire and the producer flattered me even more and the TV shoot may still come together very soon, probably up in Santa Barbara. If it doesn't, it seems they would be willing to do it next trip. Santa Barbara would kill another bird as well - I'd be able to see the rifle action that will be going into my custom bunny rifle.

Ego's a funny thing. Even when you know it's all about ego and even when you know that in itself is of no value or utility, an appeal to the ego is powerful. Well, an appeal to my ego is powerful. Napoleon said something about what men will do for bits of ribbon. Sucker got that right! Twenty minutes of fame in Canada is going to cost me significant time and money. The bright side is that I'll also get some new photographs that are, in the long run, far more valuable to me that said twenty minutes of fame. Damn, that little girl's cute! No, not the one up there. The girl for this TV shoot just moved to California from Minnesota where I'd tried to reach her for a shoot on the last trip. Anyway, when this all happens you'll be the first to see the pictures.

The girl up there is Crystal, photographed at the same shoot as Danielle just below. There's something really hot about a girl without britches.

This morning I responded to the television producer, declining the CTV profile. I've been having a problem finding an appropriate model and it got me thinking. After all, I'm not really doing any photography right now, and I hate driving to Los Angeles, so why was I doing this? Ego, of course. I have a huge ego and when that's appealed to, often will jump tall buildings in a single bound, etc. But an appeal to my ego is a terrible reason to do things I wouldn't do otherwise. So I said thank you very much, but no - not this time. I did refer them to a couple of other erotic photographers in L.A. that I respect.

And thus ends my brush with twenty minutes of Canadian fame.

(Edit: They came back and offered to do the taping in San Diego, I responded asking for more time. I guess I have a rain check and will probably do it once I've had the time to set it up the way I want. OK, I'm easy. What can I say?)

This is Danielle, an agency model who was testing for a submittal to a magazine that wanted a second feature from me. In that case it was an ego appeal for both of us, but was loads of fun. The magazine didn't use the results.

When I was a Boy Scout - oh so young - our troop left the plains of North Dakota to spend a week or so in the Crazy Mountains in Montana. After driving across all that flat land all the way past Billings we finally saw mountains - for me it was the first time I remember seeing them. Crazy Peak stood out as the highest in the range. They were ragged and white-capped and just like a picture postcard.

We drove on to Livingston, turned right to Clyde Park and turned right again, ending up at a ranch where our Scoutmaster picked up the keys to a gate up the road. We entered public land surrounded by trees and eventually parked the three or four cars and began our trek.

Once inside the range it didn't seem much like mountains. It seemed about the same as the birch and cottonwood groves in the creek valley by my grandparents' farm in Minnesota. We didn't scramble up scree fields or rappel down cliffs; we just hiked up the trail. Once in awhile a view to the south or east reminded us we weren't on the flat lands anymore, but by and large mountains seemed much less impressive once we were in them than they'd seemed looking at them from the outside.

Later I returned to that range, once with a high school friend and once alone, both times retracing the paths of that Boy Scout outing. Both times the mountains were more impressive, I think because my expectations had changed. I was looking at what they were based on the earlier experience, rather than disappointed that they hadn't met my ignorant expectations.

Up to here this is stuff I've been thinking about for awhile. Frankly I'm at a loss as to where to go with it. There's got to be a moral here somewhere. Perspective is everything ("perspective" having been defined to me by my photo prof as where you stand); the view from the inside isn't the same as the view from the outside; something about our worshipful adoration of people who know from their own point of view just how human they are; something about achieving goals by going one small step at a time?

And so, abruptly, ends the sermon for today.

Priscilla Mae, photographed wearing a couple articles from the huge tote bag she brought to the shoot in South Miami Beach, Florida. I may have told the story about how the mother of a prospective 15-yr-old model (NO! Not Priscilla!) gave me use of her beach condo there for having photographed her girl in Billings one year not so long ago. Or I may not have. Just remember, if all this stuff impresses you it's because you haven't seen it from my perspective.

Back here I mentioned that CTV had contacted me about doing a profile for their SexTV program. It appears that they will be following through with it and it will include a taped interview with your totally non-photogenic correspondent, as well as a taped photoshoot. The shoot is a little problematic in that I must use ambient lighting, both for the comfort of the model and for the atmosphere of the results. And it means I have to find a model in L.A. who will be comfortable getting off on world wide television.

Anyway, the discussions continue and nothing's final. They haven't agreed to the lighting, nor have I gone off searching for a model yet, but the project is still moving along.

In the meantime it remains fun to watch the world's economy crumble and the candidates insisting it's not about race or gender, etc.

Life remains pretty good!

This is Angela again, the Newfoundland model so dear to my heart, photographed in my studio during her last visit.

Sorta fun, watching the markets crash. In a schadenfreude sort of way. Seeing my retirement lose more in the first few days of January than I actually make in a month is a bitch, but I actually own more stuff in the market than I did at the beginning of the year. It's just that the stuff doesn't seem to be worth as much in that people aren't willing to pay as much for it now as they were at one time. Unlike "normal" times, that stuff I own is behaving like most physical belongings that lose value once they leave the store. My little farm truck was worth about $2000 less once I'd bought it from a dealer, as the market price for a used pickup from a private owner is less than from a dealer.

But things like the little farm truck are bought for their utility or some other reason, not as investments. I sort of snicker when I hear people talking about "investing" in a BMW. It is an "investment" only in its potential to make money, so for those who are not using that BMW as a business tool, it is not an investment.

The folks trading all over, trying to hold onto a fixed dollar value have ended up mostly losing not only dollars, but the amount of stuff they actually own. That's the schadenfreude part.

So the crash continues. So what is the government plan? Give ev'rbody !five hunnert dollars!. So they can spend it foolishly and quickly! Wasn't one of the main causes of the housing crash that Americans don't save money? Seems to me that this largess is about as likely to reverse the course of the economy as a single speed bump on each on-ramp would be to reduce accidents on the Interstate Highway system. Well, I'll be happy to take the money - it started out as my money anyway.

Been a busy weekend: shaved my ears, trimmed my beard, did the laundry, hung out with some friends, reloaded the brass I'd emptied up in Santa Barbara, read a couple of nondescript books, etc.

Cynnamon, photographed at a party in the warehouse next door last summer. You've seen the nudes - now you get to see her with clothes on!

Haven't been riding the motorcycles much. It's cold and I'm old and it's probably time I sold at least one. Probably start listing the green bike on Craigslist pretty soon. One hundred and thirty-five horsepower makes me ride like a kid, but unlike a kid, I don't bounce. And can't see or hear as well as I once could. I think my reactions are still pretty good, and experience counts for something for sure, but it would be a pity to die this close to retirement.

Rode that one downtown for coffee just now. There's nothing like a fast bike - never will be unless they figure out how to make those Star Wars thingies. Imperial Speeders. I suppose I could step down to a cruiser or some other form of slow conveyance, but I'm not sure I could live with twice the weight and half the power. Once you've had the best ...

I'll ride down to the bookstore in a bit and see if I can find some light reading - taking a break from Pynchon's Mason & Dixon for a while. Taking a break from Pynchon, actually.

I think I mentioned that I'm having a rifle built. It will be a Martini- actioned single-shot .22 magnum rimfire. I'm starting to get some of the costs in and it looks altogether reasonable. The big decision is whether I'm going to scope it or use the stock Parker-Hale peep sights. Peep sights are more fun, but a scope means I can actually hit what I'm shooting at. Big decision. Haven't decided yet. And there's the matter of the quality of the wood. I love dark, figured wood, but unless the metal is superb, such wood would be a waste. Lots of logistics goes into this stuff - I'd never have imagined how many different people would be involved in one little custom rifle.

Up top is Lapis breathing heavy in Chicago. The photo of the rifle action is stolen from Bob Adams, a dealer in fine collectible firearms. When I have one of my own, I'll show you.

So I took the comic section of the paper into the "library" and sat down to read. It also included a bunch of movie stuff. I sifted through the movie stuff thinking about how people seemed to prefer entertainment to life, until I got to the comics - one of the highlights of my day. So I sat there being entertained by the minds of the writers until I got to the last square on the last page. Dennis was telling Joey that "Margaret would rather read about having than actually have fun."

That was a better way of putting the passing ghosts of thoughts I'd had flipping past the movies than I could have invented.

Yes, I realize that being entertained by comics is of the same nature as being entertained by movies. But it's of a different magnitude entirely. Four or five minutes in the "library" isn't the same as two hours in a place where one must arrange transportation logistics and spend ridiculous money for the entertainment. It also seems that if I'm going to encourage the bastards, I'd rather encourage the newspaper bastards than the movie industry bastards.

So, why do people go to movies to see what kind of life they might imagine living, rather than just go out and live that kind of life directly? I suppose a life of animation isn't that easy to achieve. But the sort of life in most sorts of dramas is within reach. Wanna go see war flicks? Go join up - we've got two public wars going on right now and I'm sure one of the services will take most anybody. Wanna see romance movies? Go be really romantic. Don't dream about it - go learn what "romantic" means then do it. Swords and shit? Fencing classes can be had at many community colleges. Not quite the same, but a good bit closer than munching popcorn and slurping Coke. Crime? Become a criminal or a cop. Both seem to be pretty easy to do these days. Westerns? Learn to ride a horse and shoot a Winchester rifle. Science fiction? Go study astrophysics and learn to fly.

Seems to me that movies are probably a higher profile influence on the lives of most people than high school was. (Books too, but I didn't get bit by that particular rabid mania today.) Figure out what's cool, then do it. These days if one wants to wear a cape, one can. Well, in the cities at least.

Let's see. What did I last see? Aha! Up in Santa Barbara at the cheap motel. "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." OK, sometimes a movie doesn't really inspire one to do anything particularly at all. Sometimes they're just a couple hours of entertainment if one can stay awake for the whole thing. I didn't.

This is Rebecca, the photographer linked over on the right. Now I suppose she'll want to photograph me naked. Funny, but she hasn't mentioned that at all.

P.S. I just finished up one of John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey books that I'd begged from Bruce up in Santa Barbara. Short review: Excellent shit! Funny! Now I understand why everyone (but, apparently, me) reads them.

Chantel, photographed in Winnipeg a couple of years back. I figure this is a good time to suck up to Canada as I've been contacted (tentatively) by CTV, who may want to profile me on their show SexTV. They've done Gatewood and Kern, and I suspect are dipping deep now to have found me. Anyway, it sounds like fun. I might have to find an L.A. girl to shoot for them. Shouldn't be too hard.

Funny that this should come along just as I'm beginning a hiatus from photography. But isn't that the way it always happens?

On a completely different topic, the damned "check engine" light is back on again. Maybe it's time for me to simply take it to a Ford dealer and let them deal with it.

I have the utmost respect for folks who create things in more than two dimensions. Sculpture, film, installation art, lowriders. Mathematically, each additional dimension multiplies the complexity of a figure by infinity (though dealing with additional dimensions mathematically really only adds one order of magnitude). Still, two-dimensional things are difficult enough. The people that make movies where each and every frame is a better photograph than I've ever made leave me in awe. I can't imagine how that can be possible, but people do it all the time.

Some things can be simplified in the process. As a kid I was fascinated by a cube that had been milled in such a way that from one end it appeared as the letter "A," and the other two end views were "B" and "C." While such a thing appears complex, it's only a matter of penciling the "B" on one side and jigsawing away everything not a "B," then doing the same for "A" and "C." This will give recognizable views from each of the six sides. But the block makes no sense when viewing the corners or edges. Rodin's The Thinker makes sense viewed from any direction. Amazing!

Cynn paddling Angela in St. John's last winter.

The "Check Engine" light has been coming on in the little farm truck for about 10,000 miles now. I bought a new gas cap, thinking that was probably it. My OBD2 reader could re-set the light, but couldn't interpret the Ford codes. As it only came on infrequently and didn't at all for that last 4800-mile trip, I figured it was probably the gas cap.

It wasn't. Today I took it to Auto Zone and borrowed their code reader and found it was the EGR valve. So I bought a new one and put it in. So far, so good. Gotta get the windshield fixed and see if the alignment guys have anything to say about the inside edge wear on the front tires. Probably have to get ball joints before the next long trip as well.

Otherwise, I've been at the dayjob or de-capping, re-sizing, tumbling, belling and re-capping brass from the weekend. And cleaning revolvers. I use a nasty but effective lube on the cast bullets and it gets everywhere. And lead gets on the forcing cone. Not my favorite thing, cleaning.

Looks like Israel is for sure in late February and possibly a side-trip to Turkiye. Haven't been there in awhile and I miss the food and the warm people. I expect that the troubles our governments have had will not affect that.

Another typical day, I guess.

Candy, photographed in Los Angeles last year.

Yesterday I met Bruce and two of his chums for breakfast at the same cafe he has inhabited since I first met him six or eight years ago. The crew included one self-described "liberal ex-hippy professor," and a lifelong diver, the author of the definitive work on the history of abalone diving in southern California. The professor, also a writer, fiddled with a leaky Italian fountain pen as we spoke. (I recommended Permatex.)

This was a conversation, perhaps unsustainable over time, but certainly fascinating, rambling, long-striding. Literature, military history, western movies, women. Masculine conversation, comfortable and respectful. It's telling that all four of us are old enough to remember and practice the art of conversation. And it's telling that while we all had different backgrounds and politics and such, those added to the conversation rather than terminated it.

D.L., commenting on the last post, asked about the new nickeled S&W revolver. I avoided talking about shooting short guns for a reason. I really suck. That pretty piece shot just fine, but I'm far from being able to take advantage of it. More practice is needed - there's an indoor range just down the road from my office and I may have to spend a lot of time there with a .22 before I'll be able to write about handguns with anything short of embarrassment.

Pretty Uma pleasuring herself (and by transference, me) in a hotel room in Arlington, Texas.

Wait, wait! This is not a naked chick. This is not a motorcycle. Has Nelson finally lost his sanity? Have I lost my reason to read this stupid blog?

Yes, I confirm. This is not a naked chick. This is not a motorcycle. This is a five-round, 100-yard, 0.300-inch group I shot at the Winchester Valley Gun Club Range in Santa Barbara on Saturday using the scoped, 6.5x55-chambered custom Mauser rifle that my friend Bruce built with the match ammunition that he loaded. Shot from the bench, something I've never actually done before. Having never seriously used a scope before either, I found that they really make things easy.

I confess that this wasn't my first group. And that it was, of course, my best. This was the last I shot of three groups, the first two being ten rounds each with the rifle butt unsupported. For this one I supported the butt with a sand bag. It felt like I could have kept shooting through that hole forever, such was the confidence the combination of rifle and rest provided.

We also fired other rifles at paper targets, and I particularly enjoyed an almost stock 7.65 Argentine Mauser with Lyman micrometer peep and front globe sights. Shooting is more of a challenge when you can't actually see the target, you know.

That said, I've decided to commission the first rifle I'll have bought since something like 1970. It will be a BSA Martini single-shot sporter in .22WMR with the Parker-Hale target (iron) sights. This will require tapering and fitting a new barrel to a used UK target rifle action, chambering it to .22WMR, fitting it with nicely figured wood, then finishing the metal to high standards and bluing it by some method I haven't researched yet. It will be nothing like anything I've shot since shooting on the small-bore team in college, but will be a precise and beautiful little rifle that I can (in theory) carry off into some hilly and tree-infested place to shoot squirrels and bunny rabbits to (again, in theory) take home for the pot. I am not sure my life will ever be like that again, but I can always hope and prepare.

And I can take the rifle to the Winchester Valley Gun Club Range and see how small a group of holes I can make with it.

Thanks Bruce. I had a great time!

The stock market's looking ugly, politics is getting nasty, gas prices are up, and the world is in sad shape. So I think I'll go up to Santa Barbara and bust some caps.

A photographer friend who now builds custom rifles (on Mauser actions, mostly) has invited me up to spend some time at a range there, and this seems like a good time to put a couple hundred rounds through that pretty new .44 Special Smith & Wesson. And I'll take along a few other revolvers that haven't seen smoke in a dozen years as well. As with this last winter road trip in particular, it's a return to a comfort of my youth.

There are of course a lot of people who cannot understand why driving on black ice with a 45mph cross-wind hiding the road under blowing snow, or why standing at a bench 25 yards from a little round target and shooting at it could be considered comforting. So I'll try to explain.

I grew up in North Dakota in the '50s and '60s. We didn't have much, but we had great schools, extremely cold weather (to us it was "normal") and lots of space. I always worked - jobs that included at various times a paper route (down to -40F at 5AM), a trap line (-40F at 5AM also) and moving furniture (eventually driving trucks). I also did fine in school and was a member of such time-consuming activities as the band (we toured and marched a lot), wrestling, cross-country and, for a year, football. (OK, and Math Club.) Even then I wasn't terribly social and chose jobs and activities that were solitary.

Getting up and walking two or three miles of trap line before school was my favorite thing. I'd bundle up, pick up the Winchester Model 52 bolt-action .22 rifle, walk through the back yard down to the river and turn right. Up the river, along the base of the dam, along a tributary, then across a frozen marsh and back home. If I was lucky I'd have a mink. Normally there might be a muskrat or even a fox. Sometimes they were alive in the trap and I'd dispatch them with the rifle - yes, this bothered me a bit. The worst day I'd trapped a badger and it was hard to kill. Real hard. But even the worst day was another day out walking in the winter with my rifle.

Two of my best friends were trappers too. Stan (whose obituary my mother clipped and sent me last month) and Kirk (who is now a preacher). We had different territories, and Stan's dad owned the scrap yard where we sold the pelts. Both of those guys had done it longer and made more money than I did. Stan bought a pistol with some of his proceeds and I was jealous. That rifle was pretty heavy for a 14-yr-old. So, having no real reason to save money back then I bought my first revolver. Yes, back then a 14-yr-old could walk into a store with money and walk out with a handgun. My first revolver, one I still have today, was a Ruger Bearcat. It is a small-frame cowboy-looking thing that uses .22 rimfire ammunition and it rode on my hip from then on, pretty much anywhere but school and church.

Even after quitting the trap line because of falling pelt prices and better money elsewhere (moving furniture), my favorite thing was still to get up early, take the revolver and a box of .22s and go walking out of town. Sometimes I'd bag a rabbit or squirrel (waste of ammo, those), but mostly it just was there with me in the dark white cold of pre-sunrise (or as I'd later call it, Beginning of Morning Nautical Twilight (BMNT)).

Eventually, after I left for college in Fargo, I bought my second revolver, a Smith & Wesson Model 28, called the "Highway Patrolman." It had a four-inch barrel and was a cheaper version of their ".357," a beautifully finished large-frame revolver. Driving a truck during a summer break once, that revolver saved my life when a robber in Kansas City attempted to take the $2400 I'd collected for a move. Until I left for the Marines a few years later, that revolver was never far from hand. Some place along the way I sold it. And the Marine Corps handed me an ugly piece of shit 1911A1 .45ACP service pistol.

Throughout ten years as an officer of Marines I had to carry a .45. I shot it (and the rifle) well enough to be on one of the Marine Corps' National Match teams, but I never warmed up to it. And somewhere during my military service I started accumulating S&W revolvers again. They were elegant and reminded me of walking along that frozen river.

A couple of times I had to use .45s in the line of duty and will concede that they are effective. But automatics will always smack of military or police use, and by nature I'm more of a trapper. And more of a throwback to that earlier and simpler age when "trapping" wasn't a bad word and when a boy walking along the road with a rifle was offered a ride rather than reported to the police.

Yes, times have changed. And I'm in a big city now with consistently boring weather. But I remember how it used to be, and things like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, blowing snow, old revolvers and bolt-action .22s, pickup trucks with skinny tires, and horizons a hundred miles away still take me back there.

So, I'm gonna go bust some caps, make holes in targets, smell the smoke, tell lies to an old friend and grab a couple hours of the way things used to be.

This is Anglea, photographed in Newfoundland, Canada awhile back. I like Canada, and I like Angela.

One of the Wired.Com bloggers, Tony Long, who posts as The Luddite, is a particular favorite of mine. He doesn't post as frequently as I'd like, but when he does it's pithy and interesting. Today's post is a better explanation than I could make of why Ron Paul says good stuff but would make a bad president. Tony is hardly a Luddite, but he does have traditional values that illuminate issues from angles not currently popular. I don't always agree with his opinions, but I always enjoy them.

This photograph of Kristina was made on tungsten film (Ektachrome 320T) using that obvious bulb for illumination of the model and turning the daylight in the background blue. Windows were hung with duvatine to keep from being overwhelmed by daylight, but edges were left unsealed specifically to get that color. Judging from the model's warm color, the bulb was low wattage. A lot of hand metering went in to this one, and I wasn't sure I'd get anything usable even then.

"Change." Hearing it a lot in the candidates' rhetoric. The last president that made huge changes was G. W. Bush, changing long-standing interpretations of several parts of the U.S. Constitution. "Change" by itself is squat. Being quite conservative, I'm fine with incremental change, but am not happy with brand new paradigms every few years.

Some of the "change" being talked about is defined and possible. Gary M criticized my comment yesterday on the actual power of a president versus the power presumed during an election campaign. Most of the change being promised does have to assume a friendly Congress and a tolerent Judiciary. A few of the popular promises sound mighty good: univesal health care, return to a more isolationist policy (or at least refraining from being the world's policeman), return to the silver standard (yeah, THAT will happen). But much of the promised change - particularly that which will take from some to give to others (i.e. health care) - will have a tough time getting the other branches to go along. Presidents can persuade, veto and punish, but they cannot make law (except, of course, for GWB, who does it all the time). Most of the rhetoric doesn't define the promised "change" much at all. That's spooky.

Congratulations to the winners of New Hampshire - on to Michigan, South Carolina, Florida, Nevada...! I love watching this stuff!

Myra, photographed in Frankfurt, Germany. Girl's got color.

Pretty much any of them would be an improve- ment. For a while at least. I'm pulling for McCain, but would enjoy the show during a (Ms) Clinton, Huckabee, Obama, Edwards, Paul or even a Romney presidency. No matter who wins, most people will hate them in four to eight years anyway. I can almost hear Edwards screaming his lungs out about leveling the playing field and cetera, but having absolutley no actual power to make that happen. Same with Paul and the silver standard. Huckabee and Obama would be cool because they've got charisma. Clinton is smart and efficient. Unless one decides to override the Constitution (see current office holder), the President doesn't really have all that much power to change law anyway.

More fun to watch than a football game, as nuanced as a chess (or rather, poker) game. And one can watch it without painting one's face funny colors or throwing beer cans. And no matter who wins, life will go on. But oh, the drama in the mean time.

Since finding out that I have an extra week of vacation this year I've been eyeing my U.S. map. I find myself stuck in the western Great Plains roughly between Amarillo, Texas and Minot, North Dakota. My most relaxing travel has been in that area. Time to replace that hard bag I broke off the VFR and start planning a motorcycle trip for the Spring.

This is Tiger Lily photographed in my studio some years ago.

Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day" is finished. It has been a long haul, reading the book, but it never lost my interest. During the reading I slipped five or six other books in, more-or-less to ground myself before going back into the chaos of "Day."

Those who diagram a trace of the action within their heads, those who shiver at too many improbable events, those who are disturbed by temporal discontinuities or almost parallel realities may not enjoy this book. Those who cannot read semi-authentic period language, do not approve of such clever word usages as a play by the name of "The Burgher King" taking place in London in the 1910's, or enjoy abbreviated descriptions of sex of every sort (and anarchy) may also not enjoy the book. In self-referencing scenes it may be that reading this book is compared by the author to use of peyote. That may be as close as I'll ever get, but I now know of its nature.

But to those who can handle Alice in Wonderland for 1100 pages that take one not into a particular hole, but everywhere in a world similar to ours after the turn of the last century (and similar worlds, less or more similar to ours), and to those who appreciate mathematics (even of the imaginary sort), firearms (of the period and of a retro-speculative nature), think Central Asia and the Balkans would be nice to know (or imagine) more about ... et cetera ... this is THE book! I will begin Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" in earnest once I leave the keyboard.

Tomiko illustrates this post in a photograph every bit as sensible as the reviewed book. Not as entertaining though. "Day" has opened a whole new genre of literature to me. Not sure what that genre is exactly. More after "M&D."

It's been raining. Despite that I went out for breakfast this morning with Patrick James. It turned into a three-hour conversation. I love conversations. He brought along a Polaroid 110B that he'd converted into a 4x5 rangefinder, into which he put a polaroid back with which to photograph me. Once I get the dust off the scan I'll show it to you. As with the best conversations it ranged all over and covered unexpected and unrelated topics. Patrick is an old friend that I first met when he worked at Nelson Photo (no relation).

It's still raining a little, though the worst is expected to come tomorrow. I'm listening to "A Prairie Home Companion." Tomorrow is laundry day - an important ritual for every erotic photographer. Or anyone else who likes clean clothes.

OK, that's the deep thoughts for the day. Some days are deeper than others. This isn't one of those deeper ones.

Emalie, photographed many years ago in Nevada.

This morning I was surprised to find that I'm now eligible for an additional week of vacation per year. It seems I've crossed a threshold and have four weeks to squander in 2008. Being I've always seemed to have trouble taking even three weeks off without having to sell some back in December, this embarrassment of riches may benefit me only slightly. I had thought the policy would keep me at three for another two or three years, but I was wrong.

Well, I guess this means more road trips! Provided of course that I can afford gasoline - not a sure bet. I do expect to take a long motorcycle ride this summer. It's been too many years since I've fired up the red bike and ridden into the morning sun. As I can go about twice as far per measure of gasoline on the bike, this one may be one long damned trip. Florida, Maine, Washington state and home? A four corners tour? Or a ride to Alaska? Who knows? Long time to think about it - long time to daydream.

Cynnamon here, smugly mugging for the camera last winter in Newfoundland.

Interesting results in Iowa yesterday. New Hampshire will certainly settle a few things. I expect that it will confirm Senator Obama as the Democrat presidential candidate. I also expect that it will not settle anything on the Republican side, but may thin the field further and amplify the differences between the conservative right versus the radical religious right. We live in interesting times. Remember that proverbial Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.

Pynchon's tome "Against the Day" is a fascinating exercise in reading. It is an exercise. Our protagonists are now mostly in Central Asia, having started in Illinois and Colorado. Labor vs. capital, Okrana vs. HRM's MI6, Buddhists vs. Hindoos, Germans vs. Turks, Albania vs. everybody, it's a rich soup of pre-WWI action/adventure, with dirrigibles and Tesla's power rays. Pynchon, real or not, is a master of the medium. I've started mixing in a bit of his "Mason & Dixon" and despite that book being set a couple centuries earlier, it slips into the subconscious and mixes well into the plot and style of "Against the Day." That's a little spooky, and I hope it has no lasting affect on my own perceptions of reality.

Anonymous model photographed in a parking lot under xenon security lights.

The photo is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, it's one of the few times I pushed Kodak Ektachrome 320T up to ASA5000 (a 4-stop exposure push requiring a 5-stop development push) and second because Tereza is the oldest woman I've photographed nude. The colors and grain are the result of the push. Even at that film speed it was about an eighth-second exposure, hand-held, wide open. Tereza, my first real girlfriend (lasting more than a week or so) since the Ex kicked me out, was forty-five at the time. She was life-affirming (as the smell of bacon is).

It's supposed to rain for the next few days. This season has been very dry so we need it, but it also means hillside houses sliding into canyons resulting in public assistance (read "state tax money") to bail out the filthy rich idiots who thought that California hillsides would be nice places to live. Personaly I'd rather have water in the reservoirs than the idiots on hillsides. But being Southern California, it will also mean hundreds of huge SUVs and hot little imports in ditches (OK, we don't really have ditches because it never rains here - we only have "crashes," "wrecks" and "off-the-side-of-the-roads.")

(Are parentheses a crutch?)

Writing about sex is harder than doing it. Way harder. Instead of exposing yourself to one or two people, writing about it exposes you to everyone. How one approaches the topic (see the previous sentence and references to "exposing yourself") say more about you than you can ever say about the topic. The topic is too big to write about comprehensively. Or convincingly.

One may live one's life fucking away, as I did in my younger years, but still know nothing. Or relatively nothing. And when I was fucking the most, I knew the least. It might be that slowing down some gives one the perspective to learn more. Or it might just be that as one learns more one desires to slow down.

Back to writing though. If one approaches sex as a recreational activity, he will expose himself as a cad and as selfish. (Even though Ayne Rand would approve.) If one approaches it as an aspect of love, he'll be judged to be missing some of the best of life - the pure physical pleasure. If in a Victorian manner he simply alludes to rumpled sheets, he's avoiding the topic. But if one gets clinical he's too introspective and not letting the brain go and getting into the act.

If one writes about crutches - fetishes and such - people will presume he's a pervert and a sexual cripple. If one approaches it from a bodice-ripper perspective then he's probably gay and disingenuous.

No matter how one approaches writing about sex, readers will presume things. In my case models will presume I want to fuck them (duh - but we don't want to be all that obvious) and readers will presume I do fuck them (go look at my picture again).

So what I do here is mostly avoid tackling sex straight on and try to write around the topic. Of course that would mean that the 80% of my posts are mere window dressing intended to mis-direct readers to believe that there might be something else on my mind. Occasionally.

Here's what got me going this morning.

Angela's back, photographed in my studio a few months ago. Every part of that girl is gorgeous.

The first meal of the new year was taken at Cafe Chloe at 9th and G, downtown. It consisted of whole wheat pancakes with sour cherry syrup, real bacon and coffee. Bacon comes in two forms: condiment and meat. Nothing wrong with bacon as condiment, as the flavor is excellent even without substance. Bacon as meat is what was served this morning. I remember reading somewhere that there is nothing about bacon that's good for a person. I disagree - if nothing else, the smell of bacon frying is life-affirming.

Some may remember when I shocked (simply shocked!!) the cyber world by announcing that I'd ordered a new revolver. Well, I picked it up yesterday and it is that gorgeous shiny nickel plate that simply can't be reproduced with stainless or in any other way. The old-fashioned grips done in checkered figured walnut make it a pure fetish object. Well, I stopped at the local Tandy Leather to get the leather to make my own holster, but found that it would take more than the cost of a fine period pouch to buy the minimum amount of vegetable-tanned 9-ounce shoulder. So I picked up some needles and waxed linen thread and some black dye (water-based these days - leave it to environmentalists to pick the low-hanging fruit, huh?) and came home to think it over.

In the process of thinking it over I found an old holster I'd made out of skirting leather (seriously thick stuff used for saddle skirts) for a revolver I no longer owned. So, in the spirit of recycling, I cut and pulled the stitching, wet and flattened the leather under a couple of 2 1/2-gallon distilled water jugs, shaped, cut, marked, punched and dyed it, stitched and molded it into a period cross-draw rig for the nickel gun. Now I have a nice costume piece, for a costume I am unlikely to ever own. But it was a fun exercise in making something. And that is one of the things that makes me happy - making things.

This is Little Robin - she's a braver man than I am. No, that doesn't sound right. She wouldn't let me take the clothespins off after the film was exposed, but wanted to see what happened at her limits. The photo was made in '04. I ran into her at the bookstore last year and we reminisced. She's in NOLA now, having waited out the hurricane in place. She's a braver man than I am.

Well, I sure am glad that's over. While today is technically a holiday (days off, I like) it really is a day when some folks recover from last night. The party I blew off was probably fabulous, but I'm not big on fabulous anymore. I mean, look at me! It's hard to be fabulous when one must shave his ears. (This is the reason I prefer Pedro, my regular barber. The barber/hairdresser in Madison seemed a bit shy about shaving my ears.)

OK, on to my New Year's Resolutions. That was a bluff - I figure anything worth doing doesn't have to wait for a specific date. And anything created for a date specifically is probably hokum. "I resolve to practice the piano a whole hour every day!" Yeah, that lasted. Right.

Julia and I had a very good conversation back in Madison. It was on the nature of blogs and journals. I began by stating that they could be one and the same, if the journal is done on-line. She said that merely knowing that it is being read by people would affect what one wrote, making it less than a useful journal. OK, what with Julia's accent and my thick head it took about an hour to get that far. One major side issue was that Julia decided that a journal written privately, but with the intent that one day it be read, is not the same as a blog written publicly. I thought that was sort of subtle, but valid.

The thing is, you see, that I'm aware that there are a few readers here. And that does affect what I say and how I say it. I am not intentionally dishonest, but I do censor myself. For example, this is probably the first time I've mentioned the hair on my ears. I know that smashes to pieces the image some of you female readers have of me as this dashingly glorious sex god, but...well, I'm getting older you know. There are other things I don't mention. And I do write to entertain. And to convince. And sometimes to preach. These are things that one wouldn't do in a journal.

The photo is of me, made by a model (let me know if you did it, as I've forgotten - memory goes with ear hair growth). It was made a year or two back, but I still wear that shirt (with the steer skull and barbed wire motif).