Hey Toyie! Your next two rolls are hanging up drying. Look for some more pictures tomorrow!

On the road to being a Canadian Sex God: The producer for SexTV contacted me today and confirmed that we'll be taping an interview down here in San Diego on the 5th and then doing the photo shoot in Los Angeles late afternoon the 9th. Isobel Wren will be the model. I'm sorta nervous - haven't had an audience of more than one before, much less a remote audience of millions. Whatever. We'll get good pictures and that's the most important part anyway. Been wanting to work with Isobel for quite awhile now.

Rifles: I've been putting some test loads together for a little rifle I expect to shoot for the first time near Santa Barbara on the 10th. I put them together with extreme care, hand measuring the charges in a balance scale sensitive enough to differentiate one gunpowder kernel one way or the other. Primers are squeezed in with the same force, bullets are seated to less than 0.001" difference, and so on. I'm learning some things along the way. Like a powder trickler is better than tapping a kernel at a time from a plastic dipper by hand. And chamfering the case mouth makes bullets seat more consistently. But as I'm putting this care into making the ammunition, I'm becoming less interested in the rest of the accouterments that go with shooting on a target range. I want the rifle to hit what I point it at, but am not real interested in rifle stands and spotting scopes and sandbags. I'm more interested in, once I'm sure of the accuracy of the rifle itself, shooting offhand, sitting and prone. I might decide to remove the scope in favor of iron sights again. I'd rather have the holes appearing in the targets be a function of how well I can shoot, rather than how well the rifle can. Still, first I've got to know what the rifle can do.

Motorcycles: Nothing to report except my daily commute is really cheap compared to the folks driving the SUVs. Nyah nyah.

This is Angela. I've gone too long without showing a picture of her. There are other pictures of her really naked and being toyed with by Cynnamon and stuff like that, but you'll have to go back to find those. This one caught my fancy today.

I originally wrote something about Reverend Wright and black liberation theology here. Something positive. But I wrote it in the evening and in the morning I realized it wasn't as well thought out as I'd have liked, so I took the post down.

Shortly thereafter Senator Obama slammed Rev. Wright from a few angles I hadn't considered.

I bit off more than I could chew, it seems. I think I'll let the smoke clear and maybe will understand it better then.

One thing I read recently was "Belief interferes with learning." I think that's attributable to Robert Heinlein through his mouthpiece Lazarus Long. So I'll shut up and learn for now. (Disclaimer: This policy will not prevent me from saying completely bogus things on this blog at other times. I shall respect that bit of wisdom only when I feel like it.)

This too is Toyie (and me). See how all my camera stuff is laying on the floor along with her underwear? I planned it that way.

Sorry about the dearth of posts lately. Other stuff on my mind. While rummaging through Amazon dot Com I ran across a book about books, specifically about the relationship between Japanese and American science fiction and more specifically about metafiction and the influences each way. The referenced authors - at least the American ones - are those I read a lot. Pynchon, Sterling, Gibson, Dick and on and on. Of the Japanese I've read a few - Hiroko Murakami, Ryu Murakami, Yukio Mishima - and I've seen several movies.

To make this work, the author, Takayuki Tatsumi, begins in the 19th century and moves forward, reverting here and there to clarify something not chronologically ordered. And yes, this being a meta-book, it is self-referential while talking about the quality of self-referencing. A lot like Goedel/Escher/Bach.

Leonard Cohen gets into it, as does Godzilla. And JFK and Hitler. And cyberpunk and steampunk and anime and Asian occidentalists as well as Western orientalists.

All this and I'm only on page 49 of Full Metal Apache. It's exhausting.

This is Toyie. I owe her many more pictures and she doesn't let me forget it. One roll developed so far. I have to tweak the development time a little and do two more rolls. And two after that. Soon. Real soon.

This morning I had breakfast with Sub Miss Ann. She was in town and had contacted me about shooting. I spent a couple of days thinking about it. Ann is 52 and a lifestyle and professional submissive, and I didn't think it would work. There needs to be some "innocence" in my pictures and Ann didn't strike me as "innocent," and I'm not willing to take many risks right now either. But I did want to meet her and have a conversation.

So we met at Brian's Eatery downtown. She ordered healthy and I ordered an American Grease Breakfast and we talked. The topic, from my point of view, was giving oneself permission to be who one wants to be. She has obviously done that. I am not there yet. We also talked about age and its role in our aging society, about sex, about old men and young women, and in her case young men and MILFs. I won't recount the entire conversation here, but will say that it was interesting and enjoyable. Likely I'll mention more of it on other blog posts as relevancies pop up.

This photo is not Ann, but "N," from the last roll from our shoot. The new developer I'm testing, Ilfosol S, didn't do a great job. I did go about 20% over the recommendation, but should still go longer to get adequate shadow detail. That may not show on these little scans, but it's pretty obvious on the film itself. I also scanned a few of Toyie that will be shown here real soon.

Sitting at Cafe Chloe this morning, waiting for breakfast, I thumbed through the May edition of Conde Nast Traveler and was struck dumb (figuratively) by a Louis Vuitton ad featuring Keith Richards, sitting on a hotel bed holding a guitar. I don't know how to describe it, but the contrast of Richards' craggy features with the high end furnishings, draped with skull kerchiefs and the incredible lighting used make the best commercial photograph I've seen in years. Though not credited in the ad, it was made by Annie Leibovitz.

Continuing through the magazine I found only one other photograph worth noting. This was a Ruven Afanador ad for the Breast Cancer Research Center (I can't find a link) featuring a beautifully done draped nude back. I'm pretty sure the model is a celebrity, but can't see enough of the face, and don't know enough celebrities, to be sure. I'm impressed that such an overworked theme still has the potential to be done so well.

Breakfast was excellent - eggs piperade with procuitto and potatoes - and the coffee good and large. I've been out pushing the little Husqvarna a bit and am heading to the book store next. No particular reason, just to enjoy what will be a hot and beautiful day.

That's BonBon above. One of the very few attempts I've made with the digital camera. No PS or cropping or anything, originally shot small for use in a web ad. Those are her puppy slippers in the background. I haven't shown this one before because it didn't work very well.

Today four things happened. My favorite uncle died after a lot of pain over the last few years, a friend from work dropped off a bottle of his extra-bitter home-brewed beer, a guy I gave that Heinlein book to stopped by to discuss it, and a fight broke out at a forum that I frequent between two people that should have known better.

Of course other things happened too. Senator Clinton jumped up and down yelling, "I am the King!" and Senator Obama may have decided that he really can't fool anyone into believing he's really blue collar and Senator McCain was happy and surprised to see another morning. And the market went up a little and more companies tried to buy other companies and the Olympic flame passed through Finland or somewhere. But those first four things affected me more than any of these.

My uncle was both my father's brother and my mother's sister's husband. Two brothers married two sisters. It was a very small home town. He had six kids. His children are grown now, but because of the sisters/brothers thing, they have always been very close to me, especially as youngsters when we sometimes lived in the same town and always were close enough to visit. All of his kids were with him when he died in the hospital. Meds were removed and a painkiller administered, and his family was there and he knew it. It was the end to a lot of suffering, and it was his time to go. But I will always remember him.

The beer was a nice surprise. My friend talked about the use of hops and he's going to raise some n SoCal due to the shortage and high price of Oregon hops. Excellent beer. Significant body, caramel overtones and bitter! I thank that single large bottle for the nap it gave me a few hours ago. Gonna finish it up now and go to sleep.

The Heinlein book actually got me the fourth Asimov Foundation book in return. Always good to give a friend something you like. That's sharing the best stuff there is.

And the forum. I don't wanna talk about it.

Josielyn is ecstatic about Linda Tran's foot. Or something like that. It seemed right at the time.

Been a busy couple of days. Photography, motorcycle and rifle stuff. Of course that's pretty much my list of favorite things, so I'm not complaining. Got the chemistry to develop and fix Toyie's film, though it's not the one I've been using, so I'll have to do a test with one roll first. I'll mix the chem before I retire this evening and maybe spool one roll to test tomorrow.

This weekend I'll probably go up to Santa Barbara to shoot rifles with my friend Bruce. I've got a scope to sight in and some match ammo to see if the rifle barrel's worth keeping. I may leave it there for a new heavy barrel with a faster twist rate. And I ordered a press and dies for .223 Remington, along with brass and bullets. Picked up primers today, but will have to change my plans about which powder to use. My first choice seems to be sold out everywhere in town, and mail ordering it means I have to pay a HazMat fee. Have to get about 8 pounds to break even and I don't have use for that much of one powder.

It's all about chemistry and oxidation. Funny all those parallels.

This is Priscilla Mae, photographed in SoBe.

Another photoshoot today. Seems like I'm getting back into it, without much deliberate action on my part. Today I photo- graphed Toyie, a friend of N, pictured here. Also from NYC, Jamaican, Black, gorgeous, skinny, all that good stuff. And I photographed her in the same place, which turned out to be Toyie's bed in Toyie's room. And using substantially the same light. The same camera and assortment of lenses. Same film.

So ... two girls that share a lot of background, have many physical things in common, photographed in the same place using the same tools. Will the results be different? That's an interesting question. They are not the same person. They respond differently to things. But will that show through on film? Gee, I really hope so, but am not completely certain that it will. I directed and posed them, exposed film when I saw what I liked and am responsible for the results. We'll see in a few weeks.

Parked the Husky (Husqvarna 510 SuperMoto, for you folks that dropped by for the first time) and looked at each of the screws and ports I'd opened yesterday while doing the 600-mile oil change and valve adjustment. Saw oil seeping at a screw-hole that's used to check oil level (no dipsticks or windows here, no sir!). There was a seep. When I'd snugged the screw down yesterday it felt like I may have stripped it. Not like I knew I had, as it wasn't spinning, but there was that little "give" to it.

So I figured I'd come home, pull the screw and see if I'd fucked it up and would have to install a Heli-Coil® to repair the threads. It's not a big job, but it would mean changing the oil again because aluminum housing chips would certainly make their way into the sump. Basically it would be a pain-in-the-butt. Pulled the screw and found there was already a Heli-Coil® there. That means one of two things; either the threads had stripped back when they were racing the bike, or Heli-Coils® are used by Husky in that and maybe other small holes in the cases. Either way, it was a relief. Oh, the seep was because I hadn't replaced the copper crush washer behind the screw.

Above is "N," not really playing with herself, but looking for all the world like she is.

Spent the day working on the Husky and helping a guy with his Ducati and lending tools and advice to a guy working on his Aprilia. It's Italian bike country down here in the Barrio.

The shop was right - checking the valves is a half-hour thing. Adjusting them is not. It means a trip to buy shims and lapping them to fit. It's about the thicknesses available and the thicknesses needed not quite being the same. So I spent a lot of time with an oil stone, and still only brought the gaps in on the low side of the tolerance range. That just means I'll have to be carefully on schedule for the next valve check in another thousand miles or so. Could be quite awhile, as I don't ride the Husky far.

One of the guys next door was changing tires, chain and sprockets on his Aprilia Falco. A much underrated bike with the same engine as the Mille, but restricted. First thing everyone does is de-restrict it. One of the best deals in exotic bikes a few years back. The other guy was building clip-on bars for his Ducati Monster and relocating the controls and such to suit. Finished the job then found the engine was cutting out when he turned the front wheel. It was a harness that had a broken internal wire that had been "repaired" by the previous owner. The guy fixed it while I drank a beer and offered advice. Anyway, the clip-on bars look great and as he's got arms like an orangutan, it worked well for him. He just rode out, so I'm getting ready to read more Heinlein.

But there's an afterhours party next door later, so there won't be much sleeping tonight. Doesn't matter. Sunday tomorrow, and a photoshoot with a friend of "N."

This is Ali. I photographed her in Huntsville, Alabama several years ago. And we've been talking and it looks like I'll get another chance when she comes to visit this summer.

It's there in the morning waiting for me, anxious to go. I open the door and roll it out, leaning it against the sidestand and extending the left mirror that was folded to get it in the door last night. Back inside I swing on the heavy leather jacket, suck in the gut and zip it up, snapping the neck and collar tabs, then taking off the glasses to get the glossy black helmet on.

Carrying the gloves I lock up the house and walk to the bike, shivering a little because the thoroughbred motorcycle that's been mine for six years is still the most beautiful thing I own. I start the bike while standing beside it and pull on the black deerskin gloves. Then I swing a leg over and settle into the hard leather saddle. No amorphous thing that, but a proper firm saddle of thick black leather that even the Lone Ranger would appreciate.

The sidestand clicks folded and the now-warm V-4 engine pulls me onto the street, the pitch of the purring climbing with speed. Snicking into second gear with the fractional movement of a toe the bike pulls and wants to leave the surface streets and find its place on the fast roads.

Bearing left to the on-ramp I slap the face shield closed and pull hard on the throttle, as much to reward the motorcycle as to reward myself for choosing the Interceptor this morning. Tickling up to fifth gear on the most perfect gearbox ever made I drift two lanes left to avoid creeping traffic in the right lanes, then merge back to the right a mile later to exit this road and enter the first of two high-speed corners on the way to work.

The first corner is marked "35mph" but the bike knows that it's really a 90mph right-hand sweeper. We compromise around 70 or 75mph and pass several cars on the outside then merge onto the cold road that bisects the park and runs over the ridge, entering the second corner of the short commute a mile later. This too is marked "35mph," but is really a 70mph bend. We do 70mph all the way through, this time passing traffic on the inside fast lane, watching for merging traffic from the far right, then signal and move right out of the fastest lane and onto one of those not so carefully observed by the constabulary.

Not that the constabulary are paying much attention to the early morning commute - everyone's sober then and just trying to get to work. Despite the fact that riding faster means getting to work earlier, the bike lets me know it's ready now. It's been ready. What am I waiting for? C'mon, please? So I give in and roll it on, up the other side of the valley in fifth about 100mph, then cresting, up-shifting to sixth, the gear never necessary, the gear for relaxed cantering, and we fly five miles on to the exit, moving right, down-shifting elegantly, and take the short sharp right, scraping my boot on the asphalt a little and roll to a stop at the light.

A car pulls up beside me. I know he's looking to turn left then pull in front of me to make the right turn onto the main road into the industrial area. Sure, like that's gonna happen. Light turns green and without effort we bank left staying far in front of the sports car. Stop. Turn right onto the last mile-long leg of the commute and I lift up the face shield a notch, smelling the pre-sunrise air. We idle into the parking lot and have our choice of slots because we beat the sun and we beat the cars, and I back it into a slot and toe the sidestand down and turn that silky engine off and it clicks a little starting to cool and I can smell the heat rising from the engine. I lock the steering head, unzip the tight jacket, take off the helmet and start walking to the door.

And I look back to see how the bike will look to late-comers riding and driving by and I know they'll see that red beauty resting under the tree and admire it. This is a motorcycle too good for mortals - too good for me. It makes me feel like a gentleman to ride this thoroughbred. Maybe it truly makes me a gentleman while I'm on it. And I'll be a gentleman again when it's time to ride home. But that's another story.

Sara and friend, playing nicely in my studio a few years back.

For various reasons I won't get into here, it's been a rough three days. But things are looking smoother for awhile anyway. I'll have to start getting the Interceptor ready for the long ride this summer, and of course life goes on. As noted below, I got cop-stopped yesterday on the way home riding it. No real reason, he said. Something about DMV registration being screwed up. But I know better - he wanted to lick the paint. The uninterrupted swath of Honda RED paint is made with a pearl white undercoat and a translucent rich red top coat and it is simply the prettiest, most delicious-looking paint there is. But it's impossible to touch up scratches invisibly because of the complexity, and yes, I've scratched it.

Last night I finished three of the books I've been reading. I won't write about them as all had fatal flaws and I'd recommend none to my friends. It does clear away part of the stack so I can get back to a couple of higher quality books that I will mention in dispatches. The time to read as much as I can handle is precious - I can never go back to a life that interferes with that pleasure.

More stuff is happening in politics and the stock market. Nothing that's too strange, so no commentary today. Gotta start thinking about what I want for dinner tonight...

This is Myra, photographed that first time in Kiel, Germany. She's got significantly more tats now than back then.

P.S. I just bought Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love," one of the greatest books ever written. It's been too long since I've read this masterpiece. If you never have, there's a huge gaping hole in your cultural knowledge. You'll be hooked from the first page, guaranteed!

Two things in the New York Times caught my attention today. The first is that an Iraqi army unit abandoned its post in Sadr City, leaving an American unit on its own. The Americans stayed, obviously. The second is a photo of the Pope in his bulletproof Popemobile surrounded by Secret Service agents walking in suits.

There are things that the mind needs to overpower the body to do. Handstands, for example. The body doesn't want to be upside down. Scuba diving. Sky diving. Leaning a motorcycle to the point that metal touches asphalt. The brain overcomes the body's reluctance to do dangerous things.

In the case of the Secret Service they cannot be born comfortable with the idea of getting in front of someone to take a bullet for him. In the case of all soldiers, their bodies are screaming "run!" all the time, but they've learned to ignore that and do their jobs. Except the Iraqis, of course.

Another thing that makes us human. Our ability to ignore what the body says and do what the brain says. Without that ability we'd probably still be in the trees. Or running for our lives in Sadr City.

N, photographed most recently. One more roll of her to develop. She's looking for the "ass up" pictures. I should probably rush out and get the new chem right now, huh?

I'll assume everyone's familiar by now with Senator Obama's "bitter" comments that he made at a San Francisco gathering of filthy rich businessmen. Among other things he premised that bitterness about the economy results in some people, presumably blue collar democrats, clinging to guns and religion.

As always, there's some truth to what he said. Gun sales go up in hard times, even though guns are expensive. Church attendance probably goes up as people no longer tow their boats to the lakes on Sundays too. That latter is just a guess, not fact. When people feel most powerless, they reach for the things that give them a feeling of power, and guns and God do that.

Reactions from various places are predictable. Senator Clinton said something about having grown up with churches and hunters, once again getting it all wrong - guns and hunting are only tangentially related. Guns are about power. Republicans are tsk-tsking that he could think such a thing. Guns and God made America great. People are merely holding to traditional values. The press unanimously agrees that Obama screwed the pooch. And he did, having spoken the truth to power. He may with those words have sunk his candidacy.

My own experience is that in past times of crisis I turned to God. A god I now know doesn't exist. But back then He was sometimes the only hope and the only option. I also found that when feeling powerless, the ownership and control of a tool of ultimate power, a firearm of some sort, was the thing that kept me out of morbid depression. I know that sounds dangerous, but it really wasn't. That Smith & Wesson (or whatever) reminded me that there remained choices I could make. That ultimately I controlled my own destiny. Charitably we could assume that the folks Obama was referring to could also use guns to feed the family as well.

But no one wants to hear the situation analyzed like that. The God that people worship is not only a power to turn to in bad times. Guns are not only the refuge of the powerless. And to publicly make that link, while it contains a measure of truth, is to really step on one's dick. With vibram-soled Chippewa work boots.

Uma. Miss her, though we're still talking once in awhile. I still have a riding crop from Buenos Aires for her.

That great little Husky supermoto I've been telling you about? It's painful to ride to work and back. Only eleven miles each way, but it feels like riding a freshly sharpened chainsaw. For now it'll be my weekend and downtown bike and the Honda Interceptor will take its place as the commuter. The Honda is a 2002 - I've ridden it to the East Coast twice, not to mention six or eight trips to Montana and Texas or Minnesota or wherever. It's got an 800cc V-4 water-cooled engine and a 150mph suspension. It covers ground quickly and comfortably and with factory hard saddlebags can carry more stuff than I'll ever need for a trip shorter than a month.

But I broke one of the bags off with a bad decision to split lanes on a trip back down from LA awhile back and haven't replaced it yet. I guess that's my next priority, as I'd like to make my summer road trip on the Interceptor. Forty-five miles per gallon is a good thing these days, and it'll go a couple hundred miles easy between gas stops. (I'm actually only good for about 150 miles.)

I just took it out on a short jaunt for dinner. Aired up the tires, wiped off some dust. Wonderful sound that V-4 makes - unlike anything else. I've got a motorcycle junkie friend that keeps insisting I replace the quiet mufflers with louder ones to better enjoy the sound. I'm becoming persuaded.

And it's RED. And it will do that 150mph. And it is something of a cop- magnet, though usually when I pull off the helmet and they see a middle-aged rider it ends up being some smalltalk and a warning. I've avoided tickets now for over three years and it would be a shame to get nailed again.

Edit: It's Wednesday and I was stopped on the way home from work. Once the cop saw I was an old guy he abandoned the lecture and muttered something about my license number being screwed up at DMV. Of course he had to punch it in to know that. But I was not going fast enough to actually ticket; only fast enough for a lecture. So he handed me back the registration and off I rode. As I said, a cop magnet.

Anyway, it's time to do the checks, maybe get new tires and chain, get it ready for a long ride. I've missed just being out there in America with no place in particular to go and no schedules to keep. Gonna do it again this summer.

N again, from the recent shoot.

Decisions. We all make decisions all the time. What to order, how to live our lives. And we almost always make decisions without enough knowledge to be certain they are right.

Mathematics has a branch called "game theory" that is structured to assist in decision-making. It also has a branch called "statistics" that exists for the same purpose. Statistics organizes the past to predict the future. If the past cannot be used, then stat may be used to organize probabilities of outcome based on decisions made. It's useful, but not omniscient.

Game theory allows one to see the possible outcomes of decisions in light of others also making decisions. Game theory gets very cumbersome as the playing field gets more crowded, so while it's useful for coin toss games and tic-tac-toe, it's not terribly useful for life. It does seem to confirm that karma has a mathematical basis as truth - rapacious players lose more than benign or less greedy players do in almost all circumstance.

That is a pretty good argument for making decisions based on karma. Not necessarily in the metaphysical sense, but simply because karmic actions tend toward better results.

As an aside I noticed in the paper this morning that someone has been ordered to pay $150,000 for the wrongful death of someone's child. It took me aback a little as it's another indication of the American system of valuing everything in dollars. That makes me uneasy. Dollars are such a poor measure of anything. That price would be easy for a rich man to pay and difficult or impossible for a poor man to pay. It can't, in either case, take the place of a child. I guess it just once again reinforced my contempt for money as the basis of everything, including decisions. Decisions made about money must, of course take money into account. But decisions about important things like happiness must have some better basis. It's true that while money can't buy happiness, lack of money can certainly make one unhappy. But given that one has "enough money," how should the important decisions be made?

This is JJ photographed in Ft. Worth several years back.

No one comes here to see a picture of me. But there it is. Yulia made it at a cafe in Madison, Wisconsin just before Christmas last year. And as much as I still think I'm young and beautiful, this is about as good a photograph of what I really look like as exists. My favorite shirt, jeans and the ever-present "first flight" baseball cap that's currently folded and stuffed in my back pocket, with me hunched over my little PowerBook as I am right now. I suppose she could have reduced the empty space above, but that's a pretty good place for a thought balloon for some later purpose. I could have cropped it, but I like seeing what the photographer saw, so it's full frame. She used my Pentax 6x7.

She made this one too. Maybe with the Olympus XA I'd given her. This one I like better - my face isn't shown and my butt and shoulders look good. Same clothes, only I'm carrying the Pentax this time. This was on top of a bluff above Devil's Lake in the Dells. This is the eulogy picture - the one I want used when I die.

But 'nuff of that. I'll get another post out with a picture of a naked chick real soon and give everyone a reason to come back. When I post photos that are not of naked chicks visit numbers remain pretty stable, but visit times go way down. Makes me wonder exactly how the time is being spent, if not reading my little essays.

Photos by Julia Lachimova. Good photographs of an admittedly difficult subject.

It's the economy, stupid! But really all anyone without super powers can do is talk about it, buy stuff or sell stuff. I'm still buying stuff. I guess that it could be called luck that I'm able to do that. I'm not upside down in a house and still seem to have a pretty good job in a place that isn't yet affected by the ugly economy. Though all these FAA groundings could come home to roost on top of the whole aerospace industry. Military aviation, my side of it, is still going gangbusters. I'm not sure that makes me happy, in and of itself. It would be nice if there weren't wars. But there always have been. As I get older, that seems less like a good justification.

Anyway, back to the economy. There are a few folks with superpowers. Ant Man super powers, rather than Superman superpowers. They have the ability to nudge, not lift, tall buildings. In principle, I agree with Senator McCain that it's not the job of government to bail out people who make bad decisions. On the other hand, I'm not real sure that making this a Darwin issue is completely right either. What's the balance between learning from the school of hard knocks and being helped out by a friend? Hard knocks can kill. The government really shouldn't try to be everyone's friend.

It looks like the efforts of the House, the Senate and the Executive are all taking those things into account, though to different degrees. Not that their superpowers can really do anything. For every dollar printed, the ones in our pockets are worth less. Every billion the government spends is really only a re-distribution of wealth. It's gotta come from somewhere you know. And it comes from those who have, and goes to those who did have but made bad decisions. Not fair? No, it isn't. Necessary? Maybe. Maybe socialism is the only way to allow some people who make bad decisions to survive.

Sigh. I can get wound up on that, and I really need to get some sleep.

This is Angela with a bit of clothing on. She's pretty that way too, neh?

I really tried to stay out of it. N will tell you I was muttering and dancing around. But it's there anyway - my foot. Actually it sort of puts a menacing overtone onto the rest of the picture and now I wish I'd stuck my foot in a little deeper. Up to the knee, maybe.

That was made with the 45mm ultra-wide on the Pentax 6x7 medium format camera. That's something like a 20mm on a 35mm camera. Works just fine when shooting horizontal. Makes things up front seem bigger (noses - bad; legs - good) and makes the background recede something grand. But when you leave the horizontal with an ultra-wide, strange things happen. Like feet or, heaven forbid, an unwanted belly in the picture. At least I was wearing my boots. Had I been barefoot, it wouldn't have been quite as foreboding.

And on an entirely different subject, UPS (my very own Santa Claus) brought me sling swivels, a leather military sling (the kind I learned to shoot with), a rifle case, copper solvent and some ammunition. It's time to visit the range and make the scope point where the barrel points. Goody!!

N, photographed a couple weeks ago at her friend's place in San Diego. I'd love to photograph her again.

I owe you a couple of book reports. Sorry it's taken so long.

Debatable Space by Philip Palmer is space opera. Bubble gum. Good enough that I read through pretty much non-stop, but with flaws. Too many times one space ship would be going ".9 x speed of light," pulling ahead of one only doing ".85 x speed of light," and see the bad guy eating their dust. See, the difference there is about 33 million miles per hour, so it's not like they're pulling ahead slowly. And there are other things like shock waves from explosions in space and so on that give the reader pause. Even if these things had been explained as apparent and sensor-aided, it required a serious suspension of disbelief, even for a space opera fan like myself. But in the end I did suspend disbelief and enjoyed a few interesting twists on the mad ruler of the galaxy and revenge motifs. It was $13 at the bookstore. And it was worth that.

Brokedown Palace (unrelated to the movie of that name) by Steven Brust back in 1986. He's one of those writers who makes either fireworks or bombs. The first of his that I read was Cowboy Feng's Space Bar & Grille, a total Roman candle. Others haven't done it for me, and others still I simply haven't picked up because there are dragons on the cover. I try to avoid books with dragons or unicorns prominently displayed.

The premise of this one is that there exists a kingdom somewhere that Hungarian is spoken that is adjacent to the land of "Faerie," and that the palace is sorta run down. It goes from there, does include one dragon, a magic sword, a beautiful countess, a hooker with a heart of gold, and other conventions. But the conventions are arranged in a way that is tongue-in-cheek and also in the manner of those who pluck table implements to use in creating a map on a restaurant table top. The use of these relatively conventional figures is beyond the story, as they are all markers for the real story and the real lesson of the book. Which I will leave to you to discover if you are so inclined.

On books in general. I've noticed lately that the novels I enjoy most are those that are not linear. The sequence of the characters' actions and such do not necessarily lead to the conclusion. In fact, cause and effect are disjointed in disturbing ways. This certainly applies to the Pynchon books, but also to a lesser extent to Perez-Riverte novel and to Brust's. The whole story is not told within the book and much of what is told isn't necessary to the story. This seems to parallel life, where not only our actions, but actions and conditions completely unknown to us affect the outcome. Novels are a way of neatening life up - of excluding the unnecessary and including all that is important all in one place. But either novels are changing or I'm changing my preferences, because those works of most interest leave much out and include irrelevancies.

This is Yulia around last Christmas, in a photograph recently developed from a roll I found adrift in my camera bag.

There are rules in photography. Those not having to do with the physics and chemistry of the craft are more-or-less ways to avoid bad results. Yeah, I've talked about this before.

Back in photo school (yeah, I've said that before), in our first fashion photography class, we were told several ways to screw up the pictures - the inverses of those things were "rules." One was keep the knees together. You know that's no longer a big concern for me. Another one, the one that's relevant here, is to never shoot up the model's nose. I still find myself being very aware when I do this. In fact I even talked about it when shooting "N," telling her that the exposure was at risk because I was shooting up her nose.

But these "rules" are guidelines to prevent screwing up pictures when one doesn't know exactly what he wants. Knowing them, like always, allows one to break them purposefully.

Photographing a pretty nose helps too.

A girl we'll call "N" messaged me saying she'd gone back and forth, looking at my pictures and decided she'd see if I could squeeze her in that day, when she was staying in town. I wasn't doing anything else, so I agreed and said I'd come to where she was staying at some early hour. She messaged back and said "how about right now?" Like she might change her mind, I guess. She said she wouldn't touch herself, but looked good naked.

Well, no she didn't. And yes she does. And I'm finally getting to the film. And I found that if one doesn't shoot frequently, one lets the chem expire. So ... some of the negs are not all that great. Most seem to be usable though. Not real sure about the long-term prospects for the film itself. Anyway, doing the usual and scanning huge TIFFS which get backed up, then making these little bitty web pix. And crossing my fingers.

I figure out of forty frames, a dozen pictures is more than enough. Even with the film problem I figure we'll get that. Here's the third frame from the first roll to dry this evening. More later.

Now I've got to get to sleep - work day tomorrow.

Mailed in the tax forms today. I seldom do that before September, lazy as I am. Feds and state owe me a little money, plus that huge economic inducement to spend that I look forward to getting sometime well after it could have been in any way economically effective. Naturally I'm thinking of all the cool things I could spend the checks on. Getting that reloading gear and heavy barrel for the bitty rifle, a louder exhaust system for the Husky, a new pair of Viberg boots, selfish stuff like that. I'll probably put it against some debt though - it would be nice to clear all remaining debt by year's end so when retirement comes, expected or not, I won't have to think about it.

I am juggling four outstanding books right now. Just got lucky I guess. I'll review them as they're completed. Funny how one can get a string of total crap, then pick up something in the airport, something in Books-A-Million, something buried in the local bookstore and find oneself enthralled.

OK, gotta go spool film for the last girl I shot three or so weeks back. I know she's waiting for it, and I'm looking forward to seeing if the film shows what I saw.

In the meantime, here's Desiree!

You can't see it very well in this little bitty JPEG image even if you click on it and make it bigger, but the plane of focus on is on her left eyelash and continues photo-left to the extremity of her hair. This is visible in the huge TIFF and on the negative. There's a bit of motion blur in the picture, but I had a lot of light, so it was a reasonably short shutter speed - maybe 1/60th. She was probably wiggling around some.

To get her eye in focus I simply framed with the big SLR, focused that point up in the left top corner of the viewfinder, and exposed. No focusing in the center, then re-framing. I've never spent the money for one, but there are ground glasses with no center focusing aids at all. Focusing aids are crutches and shouldn't be used anyway. It is easy enough to see if something is in focus anywhere on the glass provided the lenses are fast enough and the viewfinder can be diopter adjusted if needed.

OK you say, but why shouldn't I use the focusing aid? Fair question. The focusing aid works fine all the time if the focal point of the picture is smack dab in the middle all the time. The focusing aid will work adequately to focus, then re-frame, if the depth of focus is fat enough to cover the difference created when the camera is swung to re-frame. (DOF will be fat enough if the lens is stopped down or not very fast to begin with.) And the aid will work fine if the picture is never intended to be printed big enough for anyone to look at carefully.

Here's why it's better to focus on the point of interest right on the ground glass with the image framed first: No dicking around - just frame, focus, expose. And with a properly set up SLR viewfinder and a good prism (not a mirror box), it's more accurate. What you see is what you get.

None of this applies to autofocus stuff. I have no idea how you'd be able to focus on any selected point of the frame with one of those. Maybe scroll to one of the camera's pre-selected points, frame as close as possible to that point, lock focus, rejigger the framing and expose? Just guessing as I've never used an autofocus camera.

Time for coffee. Meet you at Java Jones at 8AM.

Well, I'm back from the short business trip to North Carolina and this morning I picked up a 4-16X target scope at the post office and the CZ rifle at the gun shop and assembled them carefully, keeping eye relief and cross-hair clocking in mind, then adjusted it to about +1 diopter for my spectacled eyeballs and snugged down the eight bitty screws. No idea where the bullets will impact relative to the cross-hairs, but that's a job for another day.

The test target that came with the rifle showed a three-round group of about one and a half minutes of angle at 50 yards. I don't know if it was shot from a machine rest or by hand nor what ammunition was used. A minute and a half of angle isn't great, but from a skinny 18.5 inch barrel it's pretty good. About the size of a baseball at two hundred yards. I figure by tuning the ammo the group should shrink a bit. Ultimately I'll have it rebarreled with a heavy one with a faster twist so it can deliver the heavier bullets used for most target work. Again, another day.

Met a kid on the airplane, coming from New Bern to work crew on a cruise ship for six months. We compared the books we were reading and ended up having a four-hour conversation about the self-referencing of Eco, the self-sufficiency of Heinlein and the self-deprecation of Allen, the nature of human experience, religion, culture, Jewish humor, and a thousand other things. Rutgers grad, wannabe novelist. I'm hoping we can meet up at the book store and talk more and I can pass him some of the books I recommended and perhaps get from him some of those he had.

Well...I'm back and looking forward to reading the Sunday paper at Java Jones tomorrow morning. With coffee and one of those jalapeno-cheddar bagel sandwiches you can order, if you get there early enough.

And this is Tomiko.

She's a sociopath. She's dangerous. She's a felon convicted of a violent crime. I spread-eagled her nude on a flatbed truck. The first time we met some bikers told her I was a photographer and she asked if I'd take her picture. I said yes, if she got naked. She agreed. This picture is from our second photoshoot.

I do not respect wimpy people. Neither men nor women. People must take risks to achieve goals. Those who risk nothing achieve nothing. The same people must lose enough to know what winning feels like. I respect the risk-takers. Women or men. One expects this of men. Women who take real risks are still surprising and delightful ... and usually very dangerous.

Dangerous women, women who challenge me, are the ones I appreciate the most. Psychopaths are even better. In small doses.