Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

Late Night photog

photog Current Events, Humor, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Trump , , , ,

photog – Welcome back to the show.  During the commercial break Senator Spekanaty had to leave to catch his flight back to DC.  But our next guest will be sure to please.  Of course, after his tour de force performance at the fourth Republican 2024 presidential primary debate he needs no introduction.  Give a big welcome to Great Old One, Cthulhu.

Off to the side of photog’s desk a large video screen lights up and shows the six-hundred-foot-tall squid-headed dragon seated on his throne inside his lair.  At his side is a hundred-foot-high glass bowl containing about forty live humans cowering at the bottom.  While speaking to the late night tv show host the eldritch god would occasionally reach into the bowl and pop one of the people in his mouth, much as one of us would eat a peanut from a bowl while speaking on the phone.

CTHULHU – Thank you photog.  You’re much too kind.  I merely provided a much-needed clarification on how to ensure civility and avoid confusion during these political debates.  If a pathological liar like Christie is allowed to continuously muddy the waters with misinformation about the possibility of reforming the federal government, why, people are liable to lose faith in the basic goodness of public servants.  In good faith I couldn’t allow that to continue.  Also, I was feeling a might peckish and he looked juicy and delicious.

photog – But weren’t you afraid that devouring the former governor of New Jersey would strike the wrong note when you were trying to represent Donald Trump to the audience of that debate?

CTHULHU – Why photog I don’t see how that could be.  For weeks everyone has been complaining about how candidates like Christie and Pence were wasting space on the stage that the front-runners should be using to explain their platforms to the Republican voters.  Pence had the decency to bow out.  Since Christie refused, I merely gave him an assist.

photog – So you feel no remorse?

CTHULHU – Remorse?  No.  Maybe a slight gall bladder attack.  Chris really packs a punch when it comes to the triglycerides.  Woof!  But look, we’ve got to get our message out.  Lots of people have lost faith after the events of 2020.  We’ve got to show we’re serious about reforming the federal government and clearly working within the bureaucracy’s rulebook is only going to result in the same failures we saw before.  Clearly bold and innovative methods are necessary.

photog – And eating up thousands of employees of the administrative state is that method?

CTHULHU – Hey look.  I’ve been restructuring dysfunctional organizations for a couple of billion years now both within this space-time continuum and without.  And I’ve never seen anything that gets the job done faster and better than chowing down on the dead wood that are standing in the way of progress.  And in fact, think of how this method also works to decrease the deficit and debt situation.  Every civil servant I eat is one less parasite drawing a salary and eventually a pension from the US Treasury.  It’s clearly a win-win.

photog – But couldn’t you just fire them?

CTHULHU – How cute!  You think that Washington works that way.  Trust me, you’ll be dead and buried before any FBI, IRS or State Department hack gets fired by the next Republican administration.  No, it’s eat them or nothing.  There’s no third way.

photog – Well, I guess you know what’s best.  But can you tell the audience of any other innovations that the Trump administration is planning to unveil before the election?

CTHULHU – Certainly photog.  After paring down the bureaucracy by 80 or 90%, I intend to make it my priority to reform the tech industries.  To that end I will be spending several weeks visiting the headquarters of Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and various other social media companies.  I think I should meet face to face with Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and their peers.  I have a few “suggestions” that I want to bat around with them.  I have this theory that if I show up looking in the 50th story window of their C-Suite offices that good things are bound to happen.  Now granted, I’m fairly sure that these fellows will end up lodged in my alimentary canal.  But we all need a dream.  And my dream is that one day these people will take a hint and do what I want them to do and avoid being eaten.  Sure, it won’t happen tomorrow or even ten years from tomorrow but eventually if I eat enough of these people Darwinian selection will lead to a better class of tech giants.  And that is my dream.

photog – Well, all I can say is may your dream come true.

CTHULHU – Sure, sure.  But hopefully not anytime soon.  With the skyrocketing price of meat in Biden’s America I have to eat as many dead-enders as I possibly can.  A Great Old One’s gotta eat.

Anyway, photog, I’ve got to cut this short.  I’m due in Brooklyn for a rally by the Pro-Hamas coalition of ethical hipsters.  I figure between the craft beers and the hummus dip I can eat a swath through them and really clean up most of Park Slope.  I hate hipsters.  I love eating them but I detest their annoying illogic.

photog – Well thanks Cthulhu for your time.  And come back any time.

The image of the Great Old One folded his front claws together in a sign of humble farewell and the screen went dark.

photog – I guess that’s all the time we have left.  I’d like to thank our sponsor Soylent Green for their patronage and add my personal tribute to their delicious line of energy products.  Remember, “When you want to feel keen, remember to eat green!”  Good night, everybody.

Cthulhu’s Letter to the Editor Goes Viral

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner ,
Cthulhu

Dunwich’s own First Selectman Cthulhu found himself at the center of a controversy when he was interviewed as part of the NY Times Biden/Trump presidential election poll.  At the conclusion of the interview the pollster asked the First Selectman how he would rate Joe Biden’s presidency on a scale of one to ten.  Instead of providing a number he stated that because of the absurd increase in the price of fast food he wanted to grill Biden over a slow fire and then devour him bit by bit as painfully as possible.

The pollster dutifully reported this threat to the Secret Service who alerted the FBI.  Once a warrant was fabricated, a breaching tank and a full retinue of agents was dispatched to perform a no-knock arrest.  Unfortunately for them breaching tank full of agents is just like stuffed lobster to Cthulhu.  After roasting the tank over his sacrificial fire for a few hours he popped the top and speared the contents and dipped them in cocktail sauce before crunching them down.  It was so good that he couldn’t resist a second course so he went on a road trip.  He strapped a big net about the size of a hot air balloon onto his back and headed for FBI headquarters.  Ripping the roof off the J. Edgar Hoover building he scooped up most of the upper echelons of the Bureau and began the trek home with his dinner crying and screaming for help.  Along the way crowds of Americans lined Cthulhu’s path cheering, pointing and mocking at the netted Stasi agents howling in fear.

Awakened from his nap by Dr. Jill, Biden considered launching a missile attack on the squid-headed dragon but what with the Ukraine debacle he thought better of it and instead called for a truce.  And during a gaffe-filled and incoherent address to the American public Biden seemed to imply that eating the FBI agents would be its own punishment for Cthulhu.  But he did thank Director Wray for his service and wished him luck during his upcoming and horribly painful enmunchening.  He finished off by relating the time he was stuck in the Cyclops’ cave and had to use wine to intoxicate the giant before blinding him and escaping.  No joke.

Unfortunately for the First Selectman eating all those FBI agents together was too much for his system and he developed a debilitating case of gout.  His left big toe swelled up to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and he’s been limping around town like an old Beefeater.  But he’s learned his lesson and says he’s swearing off cocktail sauce.  From now on all of his FBI agents will be boiled, not roasted.

When the NYT pollster was reached for comment on the whole kerfuffle he only said, “Look we understand this is a heated election race but if we have to resort to devouring FBI agents every time, they respond to threats against a sitting president then the terrorists win.  I didn’t exactly know what he meant by that but the New York Times used to be a newspaper so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and sent his contact information to Cthulhu.  After all pan-fried pollster is considered the other, other white meat.

A Golden Fall Day

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I look out on the golden sunshine on this summerlike day and rejoice that whatever madness the psychos on the Left have inflicted they still haven’t altered reality.  There are still seasons and sunsets.  The beginning of October means the last of the roses finish off and the Montauk daisies are beginning to bloom and, in a week or two, the wolfbane will open its purple petals and the lycanthropes of Dunwich will assemble to howl at the moon and pull up Camera Girl’s vegetable garden.

But out in the big world all kinds of crazy things are going on.  Republicans and RINOs are engaging in jousting contests to see who will control the Speaker’s gavel.  This is a situation without precedent in the modern age of Washington.  We’re in completely unknown territory and virtually anything seems possible, all the way from incredible disaster to surprising improvement.

Meanwhile, Biden and his handlers are attempting to convince their paymasters that it’s too late to change horses in midstream.  But the rank and file of the Democrat party are seasick from all the turmoil that Dementia Joe’s policies have engendered.  They look at the polls and realize they’re part of an enormous chunk of the country that wants it to stop.  The food and gas inflation, the sky-high mortgage rates, the food costs, the endless billions being shoveled into the Ukraine war, the violence in the cities, the rolling blackouts and the attacks on normal parts of life like gas stoves and gasoline cars, the homeless and the illegal aliens living on the streets and in the parks.  Even Democrat mayors and governors want an end to the millions of illegals flooding their cities.

And the Justice Department and the FBI have made a mockery of justice by their openly partisan and obviously concocted indictments against Donald Trump.  Every week they come up with a stupider basis for attacking the former president.  Now they’re going after him because they say he overvalued his properties when he used them as collateral in a loan application.  As if corporations don’t do their own due diligence when they loan money!  This charge is so absurd, that it boggles the mind that they could find a prosecutor corrupt enough to claim it.

So, as we march on into the fall, the drumbeat of doom and gloom echoes throughout the land.  Well, that’s as much as to say, situation normal.  There’s really nothing much for our side to do except avoid taking any responsibility for the trainwreck the Democrats have created.

The only positive act that can be performed is refusing to feed Zelensky any more money for his minions to steal.  Let that murderous boondoggle play itself out without us taking an accessory role.

Wait a minute, there is one other thing.  Refusing to approve an extension to the Patriot Act seems like the only really important accomplishment that the Republican House can perform.  Let it expire finally.  The fallout will probably be a false flag attack by the CIA.  But what can you do?  Our side can announce the expected attack ahead of time as a likely ruse and assume the American people have seen enough in the last few years to recognize when they’re being had.  After all the CIA is allowed to spy on foreigners.  They should have stopped the 9-11 hijackers before they ever got on those planes.  Any attacks by foreigners, including illegal aliens is handleable by the FBI without the need for the domestic spying built into the Patriot Act.

Well, that’s enough for now.  There are still a bunch of razzberries and grape tomatoes to pick and I’m waiting for the HVAC guy to replace the oil pump on my heating system.  I leave everybody to enjoy the rest of the day and contemplate the “state of the union.”  It should be an interesting season.

Wise Penelope

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Περίφρων Πηνελόπεια – Wise Penelope

Can you read wisdom in that gaze?  I’m not sure.  But Penelope she is.  Or Penny for short.  And her mistress, Camera Girl. possesses the virtues of Odysseus’s celebrated wife in abundance; patience, cleverness and faithfulness.  So Penny it shall be.

Is that the face that launched a thousand ships?  Well no.  But maybe a thousand smiles.

Summer Critters 2023

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This summer has been a particularly bad time to get out and take photos around the grounds and in general around Dunwich. It basically rains all the time. And I mostly don’t care to walk around in the rain.  Oh, I’ll do it from time to time just to escape from imprisonment but I’m not one of those people who enjoys “soft weather,” nope.

But we have had a few sightings of the local vertebrate fauna.

Starting with the lower rungs we’ve had the usual frogs and salamanders

And a few snakes

And more than our fair share of turtles

Including an attack on the main dwelling by this evil creature

With respect to birds I got this shot in a week or two ago in the puddle of a Great Blue Heron

And of course Camera Girl’s flock of turkeys show up for the casual photos around the bird feeder area.

As for mammals this year has been sort of barren of the unusual

We’ve had some rabbits breeding in the fields

And a fox or two.

But yesterday something new surfaced.

I was walking in the yard and as I passed the front shore of the puddle I saw vigorous rippling motion in the water and then a long thin outline breaking the water repeatedly.  The impression was of a weasel shaped creature but of a decently large size.  My impression was it was too large to be a mink.  And it was very aquatic in its motions, very graceful.  It was surfacing and diving in a continuous circle.  Every once in a while I could see the yellow color of a fish being dragged up to the surface.

I think it’s a river otter.  I tried to take some photos but they were pretty bad.  I only had a 90mm lens and it was relatively far away from the shore I was on.

I told Camera Girl to be careful about letting Little Evil Dog (LED) chase after anything near the water.  Weasels in general are incredibly fierce and LED is far from a great warrior.  I’d hate to see him become lunch for a large aquatic weasel.  It would be embarrassing for all involved.

Now I understand otters are tremendously able hunters of fish and the puddle is none too large.  I could imagine this creature emptying it of fish in a matter of a few days.  This would probably doom the giant snapper that also resides in the puddle.  A regular disaster for the ecosystem.  Ah, whatever.  We’re Darwinists here in Dunwich.  Survival of the fittest is our motto.  So bring it on otter and I await the outcome.  Let God and the Devil sort out their crews.

Real Artificial Intelligence

photog Current Events, Literature, OCF, photog's Corner, Poetry

Many people have heard at some point in their educational careers that in 79 A.D. Mount Vesuvius erupted and completely buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum that were located at the foot of the volcano.  Vesuvius is located adjacent to the present Italian city Naples.

What most people are unaware of is that during excavations of Herculaneum in 1752 a building was discovered that contained ancient books, or more accurately, papyrus scrolls.  Unfortunately the heat from the lava flow had reduced these scrolls to carbonized lumps.  For the last two hundred years and more scholars have attempted to unroll these carbonized scrolls and read their text.  The painstaking work has only been minimally successful and mostly they’ve managed to find a small amount of text while basically destroying the scrolls.

But now modern medical imaging technology and advanced machine vision and machine learning techniques have combined to produce a possible way to read these ancient books.  Using x-ray tomography images that look through the burned books can help identify layers where ink appears on the papyrus.  Combining this with computer mapping of the ink locations the scroll can be “virtually unrolled” to reveal the text on the ancient remnant.  The proof of concept has now been performed on a small bit of the scan.  The challenge is to do this for the bulk of the document.  It is a daunting task because of the terribly distorted shape of the scrolls.

Now a million dollar prize has been offered for any silicon valley type who is savvy enough to take the scans and turn it into a readable text.

For most people this is meaningless.  Interest in even the books written a few years ago pales in comparison to watching a “TikTok” video of some vapid “influencer” describing her workout routine or grapefruit-papaya diet or other earth-shaking events. These old arcane texts have no bearing on their lives.  And the scrolls currently unearthed are the works of an unimportant Roman philosopher.  But it is believed that the rest of the unexcavated building is the repository of a very large private library that may contain many lost works by the best classical authors of Greece and Rome.  The lost tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes and lost histories that we currently only know the names of would be immensely interesting to scholars and also people like me who find remarkable relevance in these testaments from thousands of years ago.

So the fact that finally there seems to be some real progress on this project that has gone on for centuries, I find fascinating.  But my skeptical nature also forbids me from allowing unbounded enthusiasm to blind me to the likely outcome; failure.

So I share this with you, my readers, to let you know what I find to be the real progress that “AI” can provide to the world.  Not ChatGPT which just automates the nitwittery found on TikTok but instead the brute force restoration of books that were burned to a crisp by a volcanic eruption almost two thousand years ago.  A computer program guided by state of the art imaging technology plucking lost works from antiquity out of a pile of ashes.  That’s magic.

Margaritaville

photog Current Events, photog's Corner

In the anti-Christian world that we now live in, the academicians made a noisy point of replacing the Christian temporal markers BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) that we used to use to define historical dates.  At first, they replaced them with BCE (Before Christian Era) and CE (Christian Era) but still not satisfied with any relationship to Jesus remaining, they repurposed the acronyms into Before Common Era and Common Era.  Well, the enemies of God could be expected to do no less.

But maybe soon we’ll be back to BC and AD.  But the underlying time markers will stand for Before COVID and After the Destruction.  After all, historians of the future will decide that western civilization’s self-immolation reached its climax with the decision to wreck the industrial, commercial and social basis of the western world for the sake of running the COVID play book the way they did.

But in my own humble way I am also embarking on a new epoch.  The divisions will be designated BP and AP, Before Puppy and After Puppy.  In the waning days of the BP era, I have before me a solid week when Camera Girl will still be at my beck and call.  After that I’ll be abandoned to my fate, left to fend for myself and survive on any scraps that the very important canine deigns to leave in her bowl.  I’ll probably lose my spot on the couch and be forced to sleep in the shed or the garage.  I’ll be kept around as a maintenance man or security guard for the estate.  My main employment will probably be sanitation worker armed with a shovel and a pail.  How the mighty hath fallen.

But this week is my last hurrah.  Yesterday the kids and grandkids were over and I incinerated the burgers and dogs and the kids went into the already very cold pool water one last time and played some wiffle ball and shot some pool.  And we all ate too much ice cream and drank too much lemonade one last time before they settled into school.

So now I can relax and enjoy the unseasonably hot weather and rearrange my priorities in preparation for the rest of the year.  And hopefully I come up with an efficient and productive schedule for myself.  It’s badly needed.  I am a disorganized man.

But even if I don’t completely revolutionize my schedule into a perfection of photog-ergic productivity, I intend to finish this week with the satisfaction of having done whatever I do or don’t do on my own terms.  For the next few days, I’m the master of my soul and the captain of my destiny.  Or something that sounds like that.

So, if I end up wasting the time and achieving nothing and leaving myself in an awful spot, I have no one to blame but myself.  And to my mind that is exactly what I want.  I will have clear cause and effect relationship between what I do and what ends up happening to me.    I will have established my own example of free will at work in the world.  A perfect laboratory of volition.  The immovable object (me) meeting the irresistible force (the full catastrophe that is my life).  It’ll be my own damn fault.  What man could ask for more than that?

The Top of the Swing

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Tomorrow is the unofficial end of summer.  My family will gather for one last barbecue and the kids will swim in the pool one last time.  Hot dogs and burgers will be cooked on the grill and everyone will talk about what’s coming up in the fall.  We’ll throw around a baseball and swat mosquitoes.  Good stuff.

But the forecast is recording an oddity.  At least it’s odd for this year.  We have a seven-day forecast where the chance of rain is zero.  So now that it’s September and the kids have to retreat to the schoolroom it’s going to be real summer weather with highs in the nineties, something we rarely saw at all in July and August.  Ah, the weather gods!

Well, it’s very ungracious for the kids but a late blast of heat will be welcomed by me.  It won’t revive my vegetable garden or provide new life to the flowering plants but it will provide a backdrop to enjoy the transition to autumn.  And it will give me a chance to do some of the repairs and the preparation for winter.  I can collect up all the yard and lawn equipment and store it away more carefully than I usually do and fix that gate that’s been hanging crooked for a couple of years.  And this year I’ll bed down some of the more sensitive shrubs so they don’t get frost-burned if the snow cover fails again.

So, the late heat wills serve a purpose.  But more than that it will give me a chance to reflect on 2023.  Most people do their thinking in the winter.  The long evenings and the retreat from the outside are conducive to reflection.  But I like late summer.  I like to walk around after the kids are back in school and think about how the world is shifting.  I like to feel the shift in the cycle.  The days are already shorter but the heat of summer is still there and the growth is about to stall.  It’s like we’re at the top of some kind of pendulum swing.  The forward momentum has died and for just a second, we’re suspended in free fall, just hanging there.  In the next moment gravity will pull us down, but just for that moment we can imagine the whole of creation at perfect equilibrium and with no future or past to consider.  The Garden of Eden before the Fall.

And that’s the payoff of the year for me.  If I can have those few golden days at the end, I’m reconciled to the reality of a New England winter.  After all we’ll have Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to break up the dreariness and I’ll be busy with work and snow removal and chores and I should be busy with writing so the time will pass.  And Camera Girl will have her new puppy to keep her busy.  So, the world will take care of itself.

But for just a short time every year I try to shake loose from the day-to-day thoughts and just try to feel the Earth turning under my feet, try to hear the cicadas running out of sap and watch the mechanical dragonflies winding down to a stop.  At play in the fields of the Lord for at least one more year.

 

Meet the Breeder

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner

I am a profoundly lazy man.  Disrupting my routine for onerous activities is highly disagreeable to me.  But Camera Girl possesses super powers that no one else in the world has.  At the utterance of a word, I will move heaven and Earth to keep her happy.  So as promised today I crossed beyond the reasonable boundaries of time and space so that she could meet with the breeder of her new puppy.  And there was much joy and rejoicing for Camera Girl and for me, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, because I know what lies before me.  But as a veteran husband in good standing, I know that a happy wife makes for a happy life.  Well, at least if the wife is a good one.

But I fully realize that this new addition to the household will wreak havoc with my peace of mind.  It’s bound to do many things that will irk me.  It will chew and destroy many of my possessions.  It will inevitably decide that my feet are the chew toys that it will choose to embed its pin sharp baby teeth in.  And without a doubt it will pee on anything I leave around within its sphere of control.  This will not be easy.  But it must be done.  So off we went to the breeder’s.

Now all dog breeders are crazy people.  This is indisputable fact.  But the level and type of insanity varies greatly within the group.  And the breeder we met with today was a very benign case and also a very nice woman to boot.  She had kids and grandkids and even sounded like a conservative based on her statements about crime and punishment that came out incidentally while we conversed.  I guess whenever I speak to someone some of my preferred topics bleed into the conversation unintentionally.  But hearing it did make the conversation more pleasant.

And when we met the little whelp, it would have taken a heart of stone not to smile at the sight of this floppy eared furball cradled on Camera Girl’s lap while she petted and crooned at the diminutive canine.  She smiled and carried on with the breeder about all their opinions about this type of dog and all the qualities real and imaginary that they imbued them with.  She was ecstatic.

Now this is directly linked to our granddaughter’s entry into kindergarten yesterday.  Camera Girl has been in a period of mourning over the loss of her time with this little girl.  Her maternal instinct was crying out for something to mother.  Well, in my book a puppy isn’t a child.  But it is a surrogate for one.  It is small, helpless and needs mothering so if this creature can transition her through the maturing of her grandchildren from babies to school children, then so be it.  I’m on board.

And it’s definitely better than the Belgian Giant rabbit that she was earlier proposing.  That would have seen me trundling all winter out in the snow to feed, clean and water said rabbit.  And when all is said and done a dog is a hundred times better than a rabbit.  And a Belgian one at that!

So, I spent all of today travelling back and forth to wilds of northern New England on this quest and a return journey will be necessary in the next week or so to pick up the little refugee not to mention the thousands of dollars needed to purchase, medicate, vaccinate and equip it for life at the Compound.

But it’s short money.  The good will I’ve already purchased is priceless.  Suddenly I’m the conquering hero.  I’ve made all her dreams come true.  Of course, it won’t last forever but for at least the next year she’s got a project that will energize and satisfy her feminine instincts.

And I won’t have to deal with some stupid Belgian rabbit.  Take that Brussels!

IT HAS ALL BEEN SAID

photog Current Events, Movie Reviews, My Fiction, OCF, OCF Classic Movie Reviews, photog's Corner, Photography, Reviews

I’ve looked over my output for the last year.  It’s all the same thing.  It’s all been said.  I can’t say it again.

At this point talking about what needs to be done has very little value.  So, I’ll talk about things that I find interesting.  Maybe it’ll be technology or science or photography or science fiction or maybe it’ll be some current event that I think is noteworthy.  I’ll try to keep the outrage over Biden’s atrocities to a minimum since we all know they’re coming and talking about them doesn’t really accomplish anything.

If I see something happening that is progress, that’ll be discussed.  For instance, the red state governors sending illegal aliens to sanctuary cities worked!  It struck a nerve, it discombobulated them.  It was successful and that is newsworthy and worth discussion.  And if someone has some original and thought-provoking theory on how the world will be changing in the future and I think it’s worth discussing I might link to it and put in my two cents.

As I get a chance to make some progress on my sf book, I’ll probably put a few chunks of it up for comment.  And I’ll start doing more reviews of movies and books.  But banging on the “something must be done” drum has gotten too dull.  I’m preaching to the choir and the choir will start heading for the doors soon.

Things will be changing but hopefully folks will still find stuff here that they find interesting and worthwhile.  So, my daily announcement that the sky is falling has been cancelled and instead I’ll leave something entertaining.