It is amazing how profoundly overnight shipping has changed the world. UPS and FedEx and the rest mean that when I order parts for my motorcycle I can have them the next day. Or books. Or almost anything if I'm willing to pay to have right now.

Many businesses have the cost of overnight shipping built in to their overhead. Of course that means the customer pays for it indirectly, but in the specific case of the bike parts that got me thinking about this, I'm paying the same as I'd pay if the parts were in stock, and while there is tax on parts bought through a local shop (as I've done), the prices are competitive with onine sources. If the parts are exchanged there's no further cost to the customer.

Back in the olden days... Well, many of us remember having to wait for stuff.

None of this has anything to do with this photograph of Angela made eight days back in my studio (same as the last picture of her). This seemed a good use of the 135mm macro lens. The negative does have detail of the shadowed side of her face, but I liked this higher contrast version.

"Back in the old days..." God, I used to hate it when people started a sentence with those words. Nevertheless...

Back in the old days we disassembled street skates and screwed the steel-wheeled trucks to plywood to make skateboards, then rode them down mile-long hills. No traction, no kneepads, just fear. Stepping out the back door to shoot a fox (and later sell the hide) didn't bother the neighbors. Building a raft and riding it down the river until it fell apart was a normal childhood thing. Later we rappeled off Interstate Waterway bridges onto passing boats using hardware-store rope and tackle, and once in awhile we rappeled out of helicopters (using mil-spec gear). Ocean kayaking was a solitary thing and one likely wouldn't see another wee boat during any given trip. Being dropped into the jungle with a knife and canteen to be picked up a week later meant getting behind on the office paperwork. Running from the base of a mountain to the top and back was a kick, especially if wearing combat boots. Puking at the end was normal. In 1983 I walked the first two hundred miles of the Pacific Crest Trail and didn't see another hiker. It wasn't completed yet, so some of that was on pavement.

Back in the old days there were no "Off Road Vehicle Parks," no "RV Parks," few postings of private property, and no rules against harmless behavior. Respect was natural, not prescribed. Personal risks could be taken as laws against risks to oneself didn't exist yet. No one expected a nanny government.

Now the population of everywhere is almost doubled and it's easier to step on someone's toes. Some people weren't raised to respect others so the government has stepped in to see that they are punished for causing harm. I guess that's how it has to work, but I don't much like it. I wouldn't mind finding a place where the old rules applied and kids played outside instead of on the computer. But there's no going home again. Ain't gonna happen.

Secrets come in many shapes. There are corporate secrets having to do with heat treatments of alloys, and guild secrets like the buzzwords used mostly to keep the uninitiated from doing their own real estate deals, and personal secrets like Billy-Bob loves Billie-Jean and performance secrets like steroids and nitrous oxide and most importantly what parts of our selves we do not share and sometimes try to hide from everyone else.

It is those internal secrets that novelists expose to the world to the relief of readers who finally realize that their own secrets are shared by others. And maybe their own secrets aren't all that awful anyway if everyone has them. Secrets of bad behavior - I pulled a Michael Jackson once a hundred years ago and hung my baby sister out the window by her feet. At least it was a first floor window. I stole this, I started that rumor, my athlete's foot can be worse than anyone ever wants to know. I've lied about how big my dick is. (I didn't want to scare her. Right.)

I think people all have about the same set of secrets. They probably vary from undiscovered murders at one end to toenail fungus at the other, but for the most part the secrets are pretty mundane and only show that we're human.

That's it - I lost my train of though. Happens too often these days. I'm getting old (shhh, don't tell anyone).

Candy here, sitting on the bed nude in her motel room in West Hollywood. Buck naked. (Edit: I'm pretty sure that was shot through a streaked mirror.)

I've got a theory that many of the coolest things are invisible. A long time back I read Class by Paul Fussell. One of the things in that book got me thinking: The highest classes of people with the oldest money drive old, ordinary cars. Same cars as the lower middle class, as a matter of fact. Status for them has nothing to do with cars, or stuff. Yesterday in the optician's office, while waiting to be fitted with my new prescription shades I picked up some smarmy upscale magazine and saw a bunch of ads for expensive watches.

I've had some expensive watches. Rolexes. When you wear a Rolex you will notice another Rolex wearer across a crowded airport. And you will think how nice it is that you're in that same exclusive club he's in. The downside is that maybe he's thinking the same thing about you, and you know you're not really in the club but are ambitious and just trying to be in the club until you can afford an even more exclusive watch. When I figured that out I quit wearing watches at all. It's a nice way to meet people, asking them the time.

(Aside: Why did the WASP go to the hospital? For the food. -Stolen from a NYT article yesterday.)

Class is invisible. It's based on breeding, culture, heritage, old money, influence and other more-or-less intangibles. It has nothing to do with Breitling watches or Maseratis. Sometimes the only visible differences between a member of the lower middle class and the upper class is in the quality of the haircut and the body fat index. Sometimes not even those.

I served in the Marines with a bunch of guys from old WASP families. In many cases it was a family tradition. Usually I didn't even know it unless something gave it away. Their summer homes on Cape Cod or the Baltic, for example. They might have driven Corvettes, but that was pretty much one of the standard choices for single Marine officers anyway. I remember spending a holiday with a friend at his family's place in Rye, NY. I had no idea...

It seems to me - and I could be completely wrong on this - that if one wants to appear to be of the American upper class, the thing to do is to show nothing flashy, take good care of one's teeth, and get good haircuts. If one wants to show how jealous and ambitious he is, then he should buy and display all the flash he can.

From the middle middle class - your correspondent...

(Claudia, scratching Robin's back.)

It's been another quiet weekend and I've had the time to do laundry, think about many things, finish up a couple of books and buy a couple more, ride the flash green bike around startling pedestrians and waking sleeping infants, drink too much coffee, think more about St. Paul (my mother approved of St. Paul for retirement on the Mothers' Day phonecon) and of course think long and hard about where I want my photography to go.

On that last thing, I still have no idea.

Angela says hi! She's visiting Cynn in Maryland right now and having a fabulous time. How could they not? Sigh...and I'm not there...

This however, is Paige, photographed nude in my Harrisburg, PA hotel room a few years back. I don't know how exactly to describe her except as I have before - earthy and sexual and womanly. Sure do wish I could photograph her again sometime.

Sitting down at the cafe this morning I started thinking about the slide into irrelevance. The term "empty-nesters" defining a large part of the population with children grown and gone is one sign of acceptance of the growing loss of importance by which people have valued themselves.

Everyone wants to be important to others. But it seems, at least from my experience, that one slowly develops that importance, then quickly loses it. The slow climb through the grades of public school to the point of being a senior and in acceptable cliques gives way to being a freshman at a secondary school. Repeat. For me the slow climb through the ranks in the Marines was abruptly ended when I quit as a captain. Raising my children, years and years that I thought would never end, simply ended one day with my last kid's demonstration of complete independence. And despite the feeling of having done the job well and having taught my children to be independent, once they were, it was another abrupt drop to irrelevance for me.

Yesterday I paid off the remainder of the alimony that I owed my Ex-wife. While it feels great to be out from under that recurring expense, it also means that there's one more person for whom I am less important (even though I know that's not completely true).

In a few years I'll be retiring. The company will find someone else who can do my job, probably better than I do it. And probably cheaper, too. There may be a few follow-up phone calls asking questions, but eventually they won't bother calling anymore and my contribution to the company where I've worked for so many years will be zero. I will be irrelevant, except as a cypher that gets a monthly check until someone tells them I've died.

I haven't mentioned photography yet, but there are some parallels. Unknown girls who, once launched, have forgotten who pushed them into the stream. Photo styles I pioneered that are now being done everywhere - sometimes direct copies and sometimes better than I ever developed them. A few publications that once begged for my work that now won't answer emails. Put out to pasture before I'm ready to shrug off the harness.

And I'm not the only one - I hear things like this all the time from other folks who have experienced that slow climb/quick drop-off pattern. The only thing that really can be done is to find the next area of relevance and start the long, slow climb again.

This is Nana. She is neither nude nor in a hotel room. Armenian girl from Moscow. I seem to have lost track of her, though I do know she's still here in San Diego somewhere.

Point of diminishing returns. At the bookstore yesterday I noticed "Simple" (or "Simpleness" or Simplify") magazine on the shelf. The cover blurted something like "101 things to buy to simplify your life." Man, I felt like I needed to buy that magazine, so I knew which stuff to buy to make my life simple. I'd probably have to move to a bigger place to have room for that simplification stuff.

Please note the sarcasm. Back in the olden days people knew which stuff to buy because it was the stuff they needed to do something necessary, and couldn't do it without the stuff.

My PDA is dying. I'm not going to replace it. When I got it I thought connectivity everywhere was such a cool thing. I bought a wi-fi contract and could get personal email and surf almost anywhere. When I had the PDA with. Jeans don't have a PDA pocket upon which one doesn't sit. So it came along only for trips that involved my briefcase. Along with the laptop that did the same stuff.

Now I have a company-issued Blackberry. Somehow I thought that would be a good thing to have. I read "Wired" magazine and think of all the great things I could do with the gadgets now available, then see the latest in gadget clothing I'd have to wear to have places to tuck the stuff and think maybe the gadget industry hasn't quite got their act together yet. Then I think maybe they never will. Just because something can be done, doesn't mean it must be done.

Remember, marketing is all about convincing people to buy stuff they don't need. If people need stuff, they don't have to be convinced.

One last example. We bought a house once, my Ex and I, a lovely old redwood-framed historical thing with a huge yard and a deck and garden. We imagined sitting on that deck, looking at the beautiful yard, drinking mint juleps, taking life easy. Didn't have time for that, with the maintenance, yard work and all, but it seemed like a good idea. I should probably mention the symbiotic relationship between wall-to-wall carpet and vacuum cleaners too - think about it.

"Labor-saving" often involves far too much work.

Chantel, taking it easy.

Got up at the usual time and went in to work. It's a holiday, so I was pretty much alone there. Checked emails that I might have missed by being out sick yesterday and there weren't any pressing. Made some coffee and had a cup. Came home.

I am sorta tired of being cooped up here in the studio, so I had breakfast at my favorite little cafe downtown, almost got a ticket as I'd not fed the meter (Good Friday apparently isn't a city holiday), came back to make a post on a forum somewhere about the origin of photographic ideas. Now I'm feeling cooped up again and am going to get out a motorcycle and ride down to the bookstore and hang there for a bit.

All together now... ah, the life of an erotic photographer!

Uma with the Magic Wand in my hotel room in Arlington, Texas a few years back. Life does have some exciting moments, too.

I often remind people during conversations that I'm old. I say it here pretty often too. I don't do this to point out any frailties, though I have my share, but to point out that my perspective is, simply because I've lived longer than most people I meet, different from theirs. Most people reading this blog are seriously concerned about making a living or building a reputation or meeting chix (or guys). None of those things concern me very much. At least they aren't at the very top of my list. My concerns are more about how a person (me, in particular) should live, and about the concepts of quality and value, and about what I will do with the fifth phase of my life that will make my journey worthwhile.

(Note: I= childhood; II= U.S. Marine Corps; III= family/marriage; IV= post-marriage employment, photography and travel.)

Not too surprisingly when I use "old" to describe myself, it's OK. When someone uses it back at me, it's not OK. While my use is most often to emphasize experience, theirs is to emphasize frailties and weaknesses - things that don't matter to me much at all. The right solution is to quit using the word, but it would still be necessary to somehow point out the difference in perspective that is my intent in using it.

When I look back to when I was younger, I remember thinking that age was entirely a downer. Getting older meant not being able to run as far or as fast. It didn't occur to me that there are upsides that outweigh the downsides. And they outweigh them to such an extent that if I were offered the chance to be young again at the cost of losing my current perspective I would have to decline. A lot of my models have witnessed me saying things like, "I wish I knew at 25 what I know now," but that's just smalltalk. What I know now would have been unknowable at 25. (OK, there are exceptions. That girls get wet when blindfolded would have been nice to know.)

Just one last note. I may be old, but I certainly hang with some gorgeous young women. Keep that in mind when you start judging the merits of age vs. youth.

Angela in my hotel room in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada last summer. I'll be going back up there to make some darker work with her in March. And probably flying her to SoCal next summer as well.

OK, Christmas is over. Whew! I hate Christmas - always have. It depresses me. It's funny, but so many people no longer live in unit families these days that there are a whole lot of folks spending the holidays alone or with friends, rather than family. Some places that's "normal." In all I think that's a step backward, but it could just be my SAD speaking. When I did spend the holidays with family I don't remember it being better - the depression that is. Of course I liked being with my wife and kids. But I was even more depressed then as I couldn't find any reason for it. If you get depressed around Christmas follow this link and see if it fits.

OK, photoshoot on Thursday in Riverside. 'Bout time. A model named Samantha that's done some good work with a few shooters I respect.

This is Lindsay, photographed in my Chicago hotel room last year. Lots of her pictures deeper in the blog along with a running commentary.

Merry Christmas!

I was raised as a Christian, and though I am not anymore it's hard to completely ignore one's childhood. For those who do believe, remember it was because of God's love for mankind that He chose to send His Son to die for us. Keep God's example in mind and love Mankind, too. If we are worth God's love, we're worth yours.

And for those who mostly like to open gifts, this is Little Robin, who I was fortunate enough to unwrap a few years back. Yes, I also wrapped her. She is on an airplane now returning to New Orleans and I didn't get a chance to hand a copy of Photo (Hong Kong) to her before she left. I guess I'll have to find a business reason to go to New Orleans now.

Turns out I know three of the models that walked (stomped, actually) the runway next door at the party. A pair of twins I asked to model for me once, but didn't follow up on, and a 6'1" vocalist who was drafted for her height. She's the one I kept drifting my fingers along the haunches of last party. She smiled at me, so either she was as drunk as I was, or she thought that was just fine. Either way, my hidden guilt is completely gone.

Runway's over and the acrobats have done their thing and the aerialist was coming on as I decided to come pee in my own bathroom instead of the porta-potties. I'm up to about eight beers (all you can drink Grolsch or Bud whatever in the aluminum bottles) and it looks like I won't have to tap my private stash unless the lines get too long.

Anyway, heading back next door to see if I can find a babe drunk enough to talk to me.

This is the lovely Angela, whom I will photograph for a second time with another girl (I really hope there's spanking involved) in March, photographed last summer in Newfoundland.

BTW, Argentina's confirmed and I did send a note to a model down there, so we'll see if she responds.

P.S. 0306 AM. Done now. Party's still going one, but I'm done.

The Unabomber and me, we get it. I'm not exactly anti-technology, but there are some things that need to be thought about before they are accepted widely. Wall-to-wall carpet comes to mind. Nailing a dirt magnet to the floor is one of the stupidest ideas of the 20th Century. Prior to that invention, carpets could be removed, hung up and beaten, with gravity assisting the process. Or they could be actually chemically cleaned. Such cleaning of wall-to-wall doesn't work. Gravity doesn't let it, despite the claims of the ever newer and better systems introduced for even more effective cleaning (you wouldn't see that if anything really cleaned wall-to-wall carpet well, would you?). So they have to be replaced periodically, unlike Persian carpets. And that labor-saving device, the vacuum cleaner, would have little reason to exist without w-to-w carpet. Do a cost-benefit analysis.

ABS - antilock braking, has not been shown to reduce automobile accidents at all. Nevertheless it's becoming a must-have option or even a standard item on cars. What it really does is removes control of the car from the driver in the most precarious of situations and hands it to a computer program. A program, the specs of which aren't available for driver review. It adds huge costs to the manufacture of a car and an even bigger bump to the price. It's perceived as a safety issue, and as such auto makers can no longer offer a car without it for fear of liability lawsuits. And it does not reduce accidents at all. Shall we talk about airbags?

There are a lot of bad ideas that are slurped up readily by hungry "progress"-happy consumers. Ever want to scream, "I'm a human being, not a consumer!" Or the closely related, "I can't take it anymore!"

OK, that said, I recognize that time marches on, and progress is inexorable. And if something can be done, it will be done (note the use of shag carpet on the walls and ceilings of some vans thirty years ago - vans which would now be unthinkable without ABS). But thinking people should question the utility, desirability and costs of the next Pet Rock before mindlessly acquiring one.

Why should things that have worked so well for so long be replaced by things that are not improvements?

Thus ends today's rant.

Jackie, legs and all, photographed in my motel room in Minneapolis last summer.

Here's one I've overlooked. I don't much like weak, sniveling women, but sometimes that's what the pictures look like. This one makes Cori look really depressed. She wasn't depressed. She was "modeling."

Four days away from the dayjob without a roadtrip or something is too long. I'll have to actually do something over Christmas break or I'll go still-crazy. Maybe jump in the truck and head for New Mexico or Texas or somewhere. Or do what I keep saying I'm going to do and break that little view camera out to shoot me some [not] people stuff. Trees and mountains and stuff like that. Oh, I'm bored already.

Time to head for the bookstore for a cup of coffee.

Cori, photographed in an Oceanside motel shower awhile back.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS! Two hundred and thirty-one of ass-kicking, death and destruction! Semper fidelis!

Just before receiving my degree in 1972 I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant of Marines with one other guy, Leon Carroll. Thirty some men were commissioned in the Army and about the same number in the Air Force. Leon, a running back and one of the few Blacks at NDSU, looked splendid in his dress whites. I looked pretty good myself. Those other folks in green and blue looked better than most of the student body. We all believed we were heading for Vietnam.

A good percentage of the student body booed as we received our commissions - 1972 was at the height of the anti-war movement - but we'd all come to expect that. We returned our first salutes as officers and dutifully handed silver dollars to the sergeants that were on hand to take advantage of the tradition.

A few months later I reported to The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia for six months of training before entering the fleet. I've never looked back.

This beautiful girl has absolutely nothing to do with that story. She's simply sitting in the bathroom of my motel room in Phoenix, long after I'd left The Corps.

Well, the elections are pretty much over. The corrupt bastards have been replaced by those with the potential to become corrupt after enough practice. All the editorial writers are advancing reasons why so many of the loyal opposition were elected - my own belief is that Americans are intolerant of rampant greed and corruption and arrogance. This administration, the last one, Taft's - doesn't much matter. We're better than that and cannot stand to see those we elected take advantage of our trust.

So in a few years, we'll have to kick the newest batch of corrupt bastards out and replace them with some with a bit of innocence. Which will in turn be eaten away by power, the ultimate corrupter.

No, it wasn't the war or the economy or abortion or any of the other things single-issue partisans mention. We just decided to clean house and beat the carpets until the bugs and filth fell out. We missed some, of course.

Being conservative by nature, after hating Republicans for the last three or four years it's going to be nice to hate Democrats for awhile, too.

Claudia. Sleeping.

I'll survive that. Got about 7 hours of sleep after the party once I'd taken some aspirin and drunk half a gallon of water. A little bleary, but a bracing ride on the bike to get a breakfast burrito at Riva's Taco Shop, with detours all over until I decided that's exactly what my stomach could stomach. Haven't had coffee yet, but that's next.

There are some things that I am simply getting too old for. Partying all night isn't bad, but facing the next day can be. Fortunately, I really didn't overdo it too much. I really shouldn't have gone riding last night during the party though. That was pretty stupid. Never too old to learn, I hope.

Ashley is smelling the flowers in her Imperial Beach hotel room last April.

Lucky Bastard got it right. It's Henry's birthday party and it's just starting to spool up now at 12:36AM. Ducked back into the studio for a pee break (the communal toilets there are drawing lines). Henry (with assistance) played his magnificent laser drum machine (this is two storeys and will eventually be four storeys tall) and we're back to DJs now spinning as The Spirit moves them.

Do you know how hard it is to write HTML while drunk? Or even to spell? Shit...

Back to the party.

Oh yes. Jackie playing with herself in Minneapolis about ten days back. More pictures to come.

P.S. Hardly any dangerous or illegal drugs. What's up with that?

P.P.S. Four DJs doing their best sets. I think a motorcycle ride is appropriate now. It's 4:19AM.

P.P.P.S. It seems to have fallen on my broad shoulders to teach irresponsiblity to our youth. These folks are calling cabs instead of driving drunk. So I've gotten onto the bike to round up all the lost taxis. The younger generation - what a dissapointment. 4:53AM and still partying.

P.P.P.S. 5:38 and the party's over. Wimps.

Just watchin' some TV in Chicago. Remember those posts about "simplicity" below? Same argument used for magazines applies to television. Plus one.

First, television is about selling us stuff. Sometimes that's as simple as entertainment, but mostly it's stuff. Things we buy that take up our time and money then break or become obsolete. Which we then replace with more stuff television (or magazines) tells us is exactly what we need. Or we're told out lives will be enriched by premium consumables. (I mean, what is a "premium vodka?" By definition, vodka is a tasteless carrier of ethanol alcohol with not even an odor of its own.)

But in the case of television the stronger argument is that it forces us to take what it delivers, as pre-digested by someone whose main interest is in finding the lowest common denominator, or at best the lowest acceptable quality level. Yes, there are ways to stop, record and pick up later. And there are a zillion channels and choices. But there is no way that I know of to imagine a protagonist as any other than has been presented by the actor, costumer, director and sponsors. And there's no way to cram a book into a one-hour made-for-television movie (or big-screen movie either, but that's another post and I hate to waste it). And there's no way to do fact checks on news shows that are in-progress.

In watching most television we accept that there's someone better qualified to make those decisions for us, and better qualified to determine which parts aren't important enough to keep, and better qualified to judge which are facts and which are myths. We abrogate the responsibiity to think and interpret, and allow someone else to chew and partially digest our food, which they've chosen for us as well.

I've made my own choice. It's probably good to think about whether the latest 52 in. plasma TV is really going to add to the quality of life. Then to see if "quality" has an acceptable definition. (Read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for more questions about that specific definition).

Uma, atop the television in our hotel room in Chicago. The single time it was turned on.

Edit: Yes, I know that was a self-righteous rant. I know there are exceptions. And I sometimes watch TV when travelling, flipping around mostly, but sometimes watching an entire "That 70's Show" episode. Don't take what I say as gospel. It's not. It's just what I think, and it's always best if people think for themselves.

More edit: The blog has gotten a high amount of traffic from Belgium this week. Will someone please tell me what's going on? Thanks.

The comment Lin (of Fluffytek Blog) made about "simplicity" magazines being designed to sell stuff hits home. I will buy a "Wired" magazine in an airport once in awhile and do buy "LensWork" magazine, but otherwise avoid them completely as the entire purpose of magazines is to pursuade the reader to buy things. They aren't designed to educate or entertain beyond what is required to convince a buyer to lay out a little cash for the mag itself. Advertising is what brings in the money, so everything in a magazine is intended to sell advertising space to those who wish to convince one that he needs or wants something new. "Simplicity" magazines included.

This is the way the Western world works. Lin's pointing out the absurdity of buying more stuff to simplify is dead on. To really simplify your life you must divest of stuff. Throw things out or sell them to a sucker on eBay or give them to the less fortunate and stick them with all that stuff. And avoid buying stuff that's unnecessary. Stuff owns the owner.

I've owned a couple houses here and in addition to paying big bucks for the privilege of ownership, I paid with my time in maintaining the houses and grounds. Ultimately, time is all you ever have, and using that time to do things that aren't fun is squandering your life. No more "high maintenance" anything for me. Unless it's fun to do the maintenance.

This is Jackie all tied up in my motel room in Minneapolis last week. She hadn't been bound before and jumped at the chance. So we both enjoyed the shoot.