Trey's photography

Anyone interested may view some of Trey's photography at http://treybein.blogspot.com/ We'll put up some more pictures soon-

Alan

A Picture is Worth?

I wish we had been able to get picture CDs at Eckerd (kudos- otherwise, to the Eckerd at Memorial and Candler in Decatur-they do an EXCELLENT job with pictures and the lab tech is always very helpful, and it is inexpensive) but their machine was down when we went to get the pictures developed-so it is going to be more complicated than need be for everyone to see the pictures that I am going to talk about. But we got some pictures developed last week- two of the rolls turned out to be rolls of film Trey took with MY camera- so he wasn't able to screw them up by not focusing the camera or winding the film incorrectly.
That meant that they turned out VERY well. So well, in fact, that we had some of them blown up right then with the intentions of framing them and selling them. So he has nice 8" by 10" pictures, and I wish I could post them- perhaps later. At any rate- after we got the pictures blown up, we showed them to Daniel, who wanted one- with the blow up doll and the kudzu- and we went to Michael's and got frames and mats and I bought some frames myself for my own flowers on glass artwork. The upshot is that Trey is going to try selling some of his work in coffeshops and <> places, and I think we are going to try to get enough work together to have a booth at some different arts festivals- not Yellow Daisy because that's too $$$$ but perhaps Decatur, Oakhurst- Candler Park, Inman park, and I can sell flowerpots and paintings of flowers on glass, and those windows and he can sell his photography. Also Trey had a fit for reasons I still do not understand about whom he wanted to sell his art to and whom he wouldn't sell it to, something about how I was trying to control his artwork by insisting on selling it to my friends. Well, Daniel DID buy a piece of his work, and it wasn't a Pity Purchase, either- he should sell it to whoever will buy it. The more people that see it, the more that might buy it.

I had the most- well- astonishing sort of conversation with a lady in the German School parking lot Saturday- she saw my Bush sticker on my car and wanted to know how it was that I supported Bush. I was not expecting a political discussion at the moment and said something about how I thought he was a strong and principled leader and one could believe in what he says. He scares me, she responded, and asked, do you think it's right that we tell other countries what to do?
Of course, I said, they're nasty, brutal, repressive regimes.
He scares me, she repeated, and then-UNBELIEVABLY- went on to say- well, there are people fighting for those causes- so doesn't that make it right?
I was appalled- But the people in North Korea are forced to eat tree bark, I responded (the height of eloquence! not!) Well- she said, and then said that she thought that if that was what the people wanted that was what they should have-
But they DON'T want it, and that's the point the president was making, I said.
That more or less ended the discussion- it was very pleasant, I must say- but rather astonishing. It is exactly the equivalent of arguing that since people fought to keep slavery, they should be allowed to enslave others. This is a highly disturbing proposition for me; I, personally, am OVERJOYED every morning when hot water comes out when I turn the tap and will NEVER "get over" the fact that I live an absurdly luxurious lifestyle as compared with 9/10ths of the world's population. I would like to see as much of it spread around the world as possible- why isn't everyone entitled to it? Granted, that's something of a simplistic attitude, but surely we can help set some of the forces in motion to make that happen to some degree for all of the world. I believe that it starts with our moral leadership and our refusal to sanction dictatorships and oppression- at the very least, we can make the gesture.
But this is what disturbs me to some extent about certain aspects of the left- there's a certain aspect of underlying elitism in it- what's good for you and me is not necessarily good for Indigenous People Who Have Their Own Ways of Being which is a polite way of saying Benighted Blackamoor Who Couldn't Understand and We No Longer Wish to Take the Trouble to Educate. As I recall, there were a number of petitions sent round shortly after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan urging what action beyond signing the petition I am not sure, but the petitions were complaining about how bad the Taliban were, and I don't recall receiving any such from people I would consider Conservative. Of course not- no Conservative would really believe that signing a petition against the Taliban would make a difference. Yet when Bush sent forces into Afghanistan and actually DID something about the Taliban, I don't recall hosannas from the Left-
At any rate, I think that this windily gives some explanation for some of the reasons for our political divide- I welcome comments on this idea.

Then, on the other hand, there are idiots like Dr. Dobson, who seems to have alleged SpongeBob is gay- well, if he were gay, his boyfriend would be HOT, not a lumpy pink thing. His boyfriend would be a shark, or a manta ray, something sexy with a hint of menace. Apparently, though, Dr. Dobson was upset because SpongeBob is to appear in a video encouraging tolerance for others, even up to !sexual identity!
Based on Dr. Dobson's exhaustive research into the topic, I had to think about what cartoon characters in my past might have made me gay- this is in direct contrast to my mother's theory which is That Woman (Annie Lennox) made you - and she flaps her hand, because she can't bring herself to say the word-
Well, the cartoons I watched and loved were Scooby Doo- Ok, Velma and Daphne were obviously lesbians- Velma being the butch one, and Daphne being the lipstick one. Fred paid to watch them when they "split up"
The Jetsons: Mrs. Spacely was actually Truman Capote.
Duck Tales: Scrooge had "nephews" without mysterious parentage- and they were also Donald's "nephews" Scrooge was obviously the older rich man who kept Donald as his trick.
Gummi Bears: Gummi Berry Juice was a mixture of cocaine, poppers, and acid. The scenes of them voguing in drag were left on the cutting room floor.
Transformers: The Energon cubes the Decepticons were always after were actually robot- well, white, glowing, you figure it out.
Rocky and Bullwinkle: Puns galore, reedy voiced bosses (what about Dudley Do-Right's boss? Is he flaming or WHAT?) and Rocky and Bullwinkle- not only gay, but interspecies gay. Fairy tales-
Sesame Street- Why do you think Big Bird had an "imaginary" friend? The love that dare not speak its name! And a trunk, besides!
Lamb Chop's Play-Along- The woman had her fist up the puppets' rears. The joy of fisting.

Let's just not get into the whole deliciousness of Disney Villainesses- the best of all time being Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Show me the little boy playing house and making tea who doesn't want to grow up to be Maleficent and I will show you a Governor McGreevy in training.

If anyone else has any ideas about this, please share!

Bush's World! Party Time! Excellent!

I wasn't going to post again today because of the difficulties I had putting up the earlier post, but then I found this photo of Bush at his inauguration (courtesy of Mr. Lileks) and I had to post it- and discuss it-
To me, this picture illustrates why the country is so divided- Bush is a guy president. He's the guy who bring beer over to watch the game in your basement and talk about issues over a 6 pack and buy tickets to the Van Halen concert. He doesn't do scripts well, he doesn't do nuance, he communicates clearly and simply- and he means what he says. Look at the picture- he's had an entirely spontaneous reaction to being in the spotlight, and something honest, instead of Clinton's crocodile tears, Gore's pedantry, or Kerry's gravitas- which could be false; but if it is authentic, is leaden. Bush doesn't <> necessarily well because he isn't about telling people something politically correct which he can weasel out of later- you aren't going to see him prevaricate like Clinton did- he'd never going to say >>That depends on what the meaning of <> is. If Bush lies, as, admittedly, some people feel, it's going to be a straightforward LIE, not a prevarication, and no lip-biting- he sees his mission as simple and he's going to say what he needs to say to get the job done.
I get this image of Bush and Cheney as a Wayne's World kind of White House- and I can identify with that. Truth be told, the house only recently stopped being a frat house- - - so that makes me see a lot in the president that I can understand.
Looking back at the election, I wonder if the media had supported Dean, how he would have done. I think the reason he didn't win in the primaries was because the media really didn't play his candidacy in a positive light, the way they're currently falling all over Barack Obama.
I'm torn between gloating and hoping that the Democrats get it together and come up with a decent candidate in the next couple of years- and a decent agenda- some POSITIVE vision for the future rather than simply No. I think eventually it will weaken the country if we don't have a better balance.

Bush's World! Party Time! Excellent!

Horrors!

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1386262,00.html

The next grand cinematic project of director Oliver Stone was to have been his long-cherished ambition to adapt The Fountainhead by philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand - a book that argues all real achievement is the product of individual ability and effort.

Horrors! I love Ayn Rand- and I don't think I like Oliver Stone. I think I saw one of his movies once, and didn't care for it- and from what I understand he has a very left-wing perspective so how he would pervert Ms. Rand's vision is too horrible to be contemplated. He could, of course, cast Kevin Costner as Howard Roark which would totally destroy her ideals- errrk, it would be worse than the abomination that was The Haunting. They took a wonderful book and trashed it.

Here's another horror, courtesy of Erin Malloy of the Eurythmics list-

Can you imagine if rock stars

from OUR generation had stink water? Celibacy by Morrissey...Melancholia by

Robert Smith...Ambiguity by Annie Lennox...Absurdity by Bjork...

What about Hirsute, for Poison- what band/singer could you pick for the perfumes:  

Malice; Antipathy; Camaraderie; Improvident;  Equivocation;  Sophistry;  Chimera (that would

also make a good name for a car)  

Now, it's up to Ed to imagine what these things would smell like-

The ultimate horror occurred earlier this week- I was passing the principal

in the hall in the morning and she asked me, Mr. Thomas, did I sleep 

with you last night?  I was rather surprised and said no ma'am and went

on- And I thought about this the rest of the day, because I couldn't understand what 

she was getting at.  Then I decided she had made a Freudian slip and intended

instead to ask me - did I SPEAK with you last night?  So the next day I asked her

did she need to speak with me- and she said she didn't, so I am still

unsure, yet horrified. 

Two quick notes

Two quick notes for today:

Trey went looking for a job yesterday and came home with some flyer that he was asking about- something poorly assembled and poorly copied about protesting Bush's inauguration and encouraging students to walk out of class.
This enraged me, and it probably did not help that I was reading 1984 right before that. I think it's entirely reasonable to have differing political opinions. I can certainly see how the same set of facts, viewed from a different angle, might produce a different opinion. What frankly astonishes me is the willingness of many people (largely on the left but I am certain there are those on the right as well) to simply STOP THINKING and accept received <> without examining or questioning it. Bush is bad! There aren't any nuances or reasons or facts or debate to this argument- he's just bad. No war for oil! Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton- and the venom is striking- it has all the character of the two-minute hate in 1984.
I think there are legitimate arguments to be made against the war in Iraq; The reasons we went to war had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and anyone could have seen that at the beginning. Neither did they have to do with oil or Halliburton because if Bush really wanted to be corrupt or whatever then he would find a simpler way to do it. He has lots of money already anyway. It's an absurd argument. But the reasons we went to war, as I see them, were that currently the United States is well prepared to defend France from an attack by Germany or the Netherlands from the Soviet Union- none of which are likely eventualities any more. We're also somewhat prepared to defend from an attack by Japan- we still haven't won the war in Korea and Vietnam- we know how that turned out. But we aren't prepared militarily for the conflicts of the 21st century which are going to be in the Middle East- and we can't rely on our <> in the region to support us. So we invaded the least powerful and most disliked country to prepare for the next set of global engagements. There are probably other reasons (good is a matter of debate) as well that I don't know about- scare Libya into cooperating, etc. But War is Bad, Bush is Worse is not a good argument at all. In terms of defensibility- Clinton sent troops into Kosovo for equally dubious purposes and with equally murky goals. No one complained then- and this is clearly a matter of national security.
In other terms, let's phrase this regarding a <> I had with my mother at Thanksgiving. She argued that the more reputable someone appears, the more likely they are to be hypocritical and be doing really bad things- such as hard-core porn. I really didn't want to attack the porn angle, (ahem)- she claimed that most porn is downloaded by priests. I told her that her claims were specious; how can anyone prove or disprove such a thing? What is the evidence for it? Who does the studies, how can the studies be proved valid?
The point is that wanting something to be true doesn't make it so. A personal opinion is not the same thing as facts. You may believe in your heart of hearts that everyone around you is rotten to the core and you are the only virtuous one, or that you aren't virtuous and everyone around you is equally rotten, but that isn't a defensible argument. I'm honestly astonished at the level of vitriol that President Bush attracts; he is being attacked- within his own country- as a sort of Snidely Whiplash figure, a landlord evicting the babes in the night while tying the mother to a railroad track. I have no idea where he got this image; it has no basis in reality which is what annoys me. The man gave you some of your money back through tax cuts and you still are furious. Those serpents! There's no pleasing them!

The other thing I wanted to note was that Bob Lutz of General Motors has a blog. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/ This strikes me as the sort of desperate attempt to increase market share that characterises GM; some marketeer must have come up with the idea - Blogs! They're the cool thing! All the kids have them! 60 minutes! Dan Rather! Or some clueless V.P. mentioned it- blogs are cool, I've been hearing a lot about blogs-without knowing whether it was a sort of tyre, a kind of hat, or what it is- and so it was decreed that Mr. lutz should have a blog. He talks a lot about interiors so far, which is a Good Thing, because that rental Buick LeSabre had a truly awful interior. Among other things that were wrong with it. My question is why does GM still include Oldsmobile in its list of division names? It rather increases the pain on missing Olds to see it still in print-

Thus far I have had 7 students out of 21 pass an IN CLASS assignment that was given Monday and Tuesday. We WENT OVER IT IN CLASS. I GAVE THEM THE ANSWERS. Only 1/3 of them bothered to follow the directions and write the answers down. Well, their test scores may not show it, but they can't be getting any dumber. I MUST be earning every cent of what I make.

UPDATE;
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/fa04/brook.htm
Here's a good example of a position I can disagree with but which seems well reasoned and has points that can be argued. This is the level we should be having political discussions at- we cannot allow the democratic process to be taken over by ranters, screamers, and imbeciles. On either side.

Last New Year's

And here I am last Christmas- with Trey- this is not the best picture of him but it will have to satisfy all the people who accidentally read this and are curious to see what he looks like-

This is Daniel and I at Jen's Halloween party-

New Space, new face

Because of continued functionality problems with the old blog site, I decided to switch sites- also I wanted to do pictures too and that is complicated with the old site. This is still complicated and takes many many steps. I suppose I would do all right if I understood all that C:// stuff but I don't- I'm just now getting to where I understand how to use it. It seems to be working ok- I'll practice with it and then we can put up pictures of the kitchen, and the bath and so on. Cool!