Camera Shake

It's like a short story in two scenes.

Scene 1 - after dark somewhere on the California freeway system.  A couple returns from a short vacation.  The man sits in the passenger seat while his wife drives.  He amuses himself by taking pictures of passing cars and trucks.  He is using the aging pont-n-shoot in his pocket.  He finds it difficult to hold the camera steady.

Scene 2 - the last day of the month.  The same man looks for some simple material to fulfill his quota of blog posts for the month.  Will he remember to remind readers that they can see enlargements of his pictures by clicking on them?

Shake Tags: freeway photos. . . blurry lights. . . car and truck lights

Going Coastal 2

Two posts ago I wrote about Leslie's and my twentieth wedding anniversary. A few days later we set off on a short vacation, driving up the California coast to the city of Monterey. That's where we had gone on our honeymoon in 1992.  This time we even stayed in the same hotel.

Naturally I took a lot of pictures. I used both the point-and-shoot in my pocket plus my new toy, an iPad Mini. I returned home with nearly 12 gigabytes of stills and video. Over the years I've learned that I must use new pictures in some project as soon as possible. Otherwise they'll never be seen again, ever.

I decided to edit a few seconds from each video clip into a short sequence using lots of quick cuts. I planned on a length of two minutes tops. Yeah, right. The final product, entitled Going Coastal 2, is nearly twelve minutes long.

Have you got the idea here?  This is a home video of our vacation. It consists entirely of photos of coastline, especially close-ups of the surf. You'll also see lots of animals that live in or around the ocean. Some of these critters were photographed in the wild, others were taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a place I highly recommend.

Going Coastal 2 begins with elephant seals hanging out near California Highway 1. There's a shot of Leslie feeding potato chips to fat little eager squirrels. Seagulls appear several times, including one which shamelessly takes a dump before flying off. A noisy herd of sea lions on a Monterey Bay jetty sing along with my music.  Storks fly overhead.

The animals from the aquarium are more interesting. There are lots of different fish plus a sea turtle. A couple anemones and a green coral introduce the jellys - maybe you'd call them "jellyfish".  These guys are strikingly beautiful and bizarre. A couple lobsters duke it out near an eel.  Next you'll see birds, featuring hyperactive puffins.  Pipefish, sea horses and sea dragons (both leafy and weedy) plus a few shrimp round out our bestiary.

The video ends with more surf. Leslie called the final shot 'apocalyptic' but in reality it's just the view out our hotel window. Very relaxing.  I was sad to leave so soon.  Maybe you can hear that in the music.

Going Coastal 2 © 2012 by David Ocker (700 seconds)

You could watch the original Going Coastal.

Post-Election Silly Season Wrap-Up

We in the U.S. had an election recently.  Roseanne Barr came in sixth.  The election went on forever and cost a fortune and won't make any change to our perennial governmental gridlock.  It did prove that the people who most appeared to be blowing smoke out of the their asses were actually doing just that.

Also there was a lot of lying.  Out and out prevarication.  Dissembling.  Other big words that mean not telling the truth.  So much lying that it was remarkable when someone actually did say something accurate and verifiable.

The Right wing lies came thick and fast.  They need to be put into categories, or maybe we should say, into binders:  "Romney's Victory", "Voter Fraud", "Religion" and "Female Reproductive Biology" got lied about often.  

Here are screen grabs of two Google search suggestions to complete the phrases "Obama is a ..." and "Romney is a ...".   Between them there are only three unassailable honest answers - "democrat" and "christian" for Obama, "mormon" for Romney.

One of the biggest sources of election falsehoods appeared right here at Mixed Meters in my post Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Politics.  As it turned out, my fanciful projections of how the contest would play out were just that - fanciful. 

From that point on I kept an informal list of election news stories I would have liked to predict.  There were plenty of crazy happenings that could have fit right into my list.  Most of them didn't get much media attention.  Today, with the horror of the election silly season still fresh in our minds and the next Presidential race barely begun, I think it's the perfect time to share the list.

Note: some of these are probably fraudulent.  I've not included anything I was sure was fake - but I offer no guarantees.  In time some of these links will disappear so enjoy them while you can.  I bet there are many more items I would have included had I known about them.

• Hurricane Isaac was a plot to mess with the Republican convention in Tampa.
• A black camerawoman is taunted as an animal by Republican convention delegates.
• Website urges passage of Florida law allowing illegal voters to be shot by legal gun owners.
• An article about National Review's 689-item list of reasons not to vote for Obama.
• Pro-Israeli lobby puts out anti-Obama attack ad with music by Richard Wagner.
• Romney is accused of wearing fake tan for appearance on Hispanic television.
• A website which "un-skewed" the pro-Obama polls before the election.
• "Obama will force doctors to help homosexuals buy surrogate babies" (see picture)
• Man murders family because he dreaded the thought of an Obama victory.
• Arkansas GOP candidate advocates biblical-style death penalty for rebellious children.
• Another Arkansas politician asks "If slavery was so bad, why didn't Jesus condemn it?"
• Shots fired at an Obama field office.
• Mississippi Tea-Party says women are too emotional to vote.
• Billboards announce penalties for voter fraud in predominantly black neighborhoods.
• Man gets Romney logo tattoo on his face in exchange for $15,000.
• Texas woman believes than an eggplant in the shape of a mitten is a sign from God.
• Josh Whedon tells us that Romney will put the US onto the path to the Zombie apocalypse.
• Man drives a truck carrying an effigy of Barack Obama hanging by the neck.

Hurricane Sandy

• Hurricane Sandy is a result of marriage equality, preacher tells us.
• West Virginia Republican candidate killed by Hurricane Sandy
• People named Sandy are more likely to donate to the Democrats.

The Election

• Spanish-speaking Arizona voters are told to vote two days after the election.
• Two Republicans are arrested for trying to vote twice.
• A woman wearing an MIT sweatshirt is restrained from voting.
• Irish betting company pays off to people who bet for Obama one day before the election.
• Romney puts his administration's transition website online the day before the election.
• Romney campaign has computer problems on election day.

After the Election

• White People Mourning Romney
• Southern red states want to secede.
• Arizona woman runs over her husband, angry that he forgot to vote for Romney.
• Florida man, unhappy about the election, kills himself.
• Arizona gun shop refuses to sell to people who voted for Obama. (see picture)

The most embarrassing campaign moment:

And finally, as a personal note, I know they no longer matter, but I would still like to see Mitt Romney's tax returns.  I would like to know for sure whether Harry Reid was lying when he told us Romney didn't pay any taxes for ten years.

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Prevarication Tags: Mitt Romney. . . election+lies. . . Republican disbelief

Leslie and David's First Score

It's our first score.  Every American school child who ever studied the Gettysburg Address will understand.

Exactly twenty years ago today, on November 1, 1992, about 4 or 4:30 p.m., I married Leslie Harris. Best move I ever made. Love you honey.

We can always remember the year because it happened during the run-up to a Presidential election.  Ross Perot lost a few days later.  So did George Bush.

After the ceremony there was a party. We had spent months negotiating countless details with Leslie's mother Betty who financed the shindig.  She had been waiting a long time to have a wedding.  Everything came off really well.

Lots of pictures were taken that day - although not so many as might be taken now when everyone has digital cameras.   We have kept just one particular wedding picture on display for all twenty years.  It sits in a place of honor, on our chest of drawers in our bedroom in a cheap plastic holder.

Yep, it shows the two of us consummating our nuptials with cake, a chocolate cake covered in chocolate frosting.  It was delicious chocolate cake!

Sadly, neither of us got to taste much of it that night because each time we put our plate down, to fulfill some duty as Bride or Groom, the plate and portion of cake would be bussed away by the staff.  This happened repeatedly.

Also, we don't know who the third person in the picture is, the one behind the door.  Our best guess is she was one of the servers who plated the cake and then kept snatching it away from us.

The bakery which made the cake provided us with a fresh new top layer free of charge for our first anniversary.  We finally got to enjoy the cake then.

This anniversary marks the beginning of Leslie and David's Second Score - we should celebrate with some chocolate.  Twenty years from now, at the beginning of our third score, I promise to post more wedding pictures here on Mixed Meters.  I wonder who will be running for President then.  I wonder what kind of cameras we'll have.  I wonder if the bakery will give us a free chocolate cake.

Chocolate Tags: wedding. . . marriage. . . matrimony. . . nuptials

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blue Glove

When I encounter a lost glove while on my walks I usually stop to photograph it.  Here's a collection of snaps of lonely, abandoned gloves.  Ah, the stories they could tell.

These are 'found objects'.  I am showing them exactly as I encountered them.  I have no idea why there are so many blue ones.

You can click any picture for an enlargement.

Check out a similar Mixed Meters post from over 4 years ago entitled Gloves in the Wild.  In it I mention that gloves are more photogenic than hats.  Socks, which I see periodically, are not very interesting to photograph either.  Someday I would like to start shooting pictures of abandoned shoes, which - unlike gloves - sometimes appear in the wild in pairs.

Here's a bonus shot - but it's the same as one of the gloves shown above.  I have many more glove pictures.  I'll save those for another glove post.  These are all the blue ones I could find.

Other "blue" Mixed Meters posts:
Blue Doodles 
Branches Before Blue
A New Rhapsody in Blue

More Musical Merchandise

Musical Marketing is a Mixed Meters Meme. No one else cares much.

This installment we begin with three drinkables:

• a Chardonnay with a hint of Chant, 
• the reverse of a 45 and 
• a home brew with operatic overtones. 

Then there's:

• a South Asian stringed instrument, 
• a frittered lead singer and 
• a symphony from Sienna.

(Click any picture if you need to examine the merchandise up close.)

Che's Image

If you're a person who gets livid when confronted with pictures of Che Guevara, please, by all means, leave immediately. Possibly you'd prefer to read about a different murderer.

Mixed Meters has little interest in armed revolution, but I am very interested in THAT photo of Che Guevara, the one originally taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Korda and now used for just about any purpose imaginable, many of them completely, cravenly capitalistic.

Two previous Mixed Meters' posts have shown variations on the image.  First there was Che's Brand, a review of a book about the picture.  You can see Cherry Guevara candy and Che bubble bath.  Then there was A Combination of Jingle Bells and the Internationale which is the name of a piece I wrote which combines those two themes.  There you can check out the Che credit card and the Che Guevara Rolex ad.

I've been saving more Che images as I come across them.  A few good recent finds have prompted this post.

You can see two famous faces combined with the Che image, one is a composer and the other a muppet.  (I'm pretty sure Frank would not have been pleased but I don't really know what Oscar would say.  Probably that he's just trying to protect Big Bird from Mitt Romney.)

Korda's image seems to inspire artists.  Here are a couple of statuettes and a colorful vintage poster.  Then there's one done with nothing but dice.  It is so low-resolution that the star on the beret doesn't show.  (That would be a good one to click in order to view an enlargement.)

Che Guevara grew up in a middle-class background.  He gave up his privilege to fight for the poor, eventually accomplishing nothing and getting himself killed.  Still, curiously, he seems to speak to a a small slice of middle-class America.  Why else would they display this image?

Here's a cartoon which shows an Occupy protester, probably middle class, wearing the Korda image on a T-shirt as he is being confronted by real poverty right on Wall Street.  Chances are good that the protester is not going to give up his gadget, or much of anything, certainly not his life, to help this panhandler.

I took the last three pictures at random spots around Pasadena.  One shows Che on the back of a prosperous looking Nissan mini-van.  The others are of a small announcement pasted illegally in public spaces promoting a political meeting.  That was back in February 2011.

Remember, it's just an image, a graphic.  But it's one which can still push people's buttons.  The image has a meaning of its own, which, for most people, has long since been divorced from the actual story of the person shown or what he did or why.

Of course in this political silly season, many images (and countless words) are used repeatedly with no relationship to the original meanings.  The origins have been forgotten.  Only the emotions remain.  To bring them out all you have to do is push the button.

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I found the two Occupy related images on Facebook.  The cartoon is by Glenn McCoy.  Most of the others came to my attention through the blog This Isn't Happiness although they originally came from here, here, here or here.  I got the Zappa/Che image from here (starting at 2'26").  You might be able to buy a Zappa/Che t-shirt here.  Find out about the organization behind the red and green stickers here.

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Button Pushing Tags: Che Guevara. . . Occupy Wall Street. . . Alberto Korda