The cult of denial

So, I was thinking yesterday morning, if the Pastafarians or the Satanists can get a religion going, why not Celina? She is big on denial. She denies us the fur love. She denies the silence when we're trying to concentrate on something. She even denies the fuzzy blanket love sometimes. Right now she is a one cat cult of denial, but who knows what could happen if she put her mind to it? I mean, look at this little face of denial. A second after this photo she turned her face away, and denied me the photo love. Curtis loved having his photo taken. Just saying. Feel free to caption this photo in the comments.

You've probably heard this joke. What's the definition of a religion? A cult with seniority.

This is why I dislike seeing religion based rules. Religion is by definition irrational. I don't want people governing my country, or really, any country, on the basis of irrationality. If you have to pray to some god to give you wisdom to make good decisions, you aren't smart enough to be in elected office. It's happening in the US just now. Really badly. And happening in Alberta, only not as bad. Yet.

There's a rant brewing on the self-centeredness of groups of people who validate themselves by denying other people rights based on the colour of their skin, their sexuality or gender, their religion, or even their economic status. Stay tuned.

A smaller form of irrationality is the local Costco parking lot yesterday afternoon. Holy doodle! I drove past there, and it's like opening day again. The parking lot is full. Idiots making a left turn to get in are blocking the through traffic. It took me 3 light cycles to get past the clot of traffic. There's people discovering they are trapped and trying to bail out. Then at the bottle depot I just beat the rush. I got in, and the nice lady gestured me to an open tray, or whatever the place is called where you dump the returnables. Then people started flooding in, unloading cans and bottles into the other empty trays. I get out, and people are pulling bags and bags of returnables out of their cars. More cars are pulling in, to the point I had to wait before I could get out. 

I like looking at the e-recycling bin they have. We have one at our community clean up events, and the guy running it has to turn away people trying to drop off all sorts of stuff they can't take. There's lots of that in the bottle depot version. What surprised me is about a half dozen old CRT style TV sets or computer monitors. Someone must have been hoarding them in their basement. There was the usual selection of flat screen TV's, some computer monitor sized, some big, some huge, and one that was bigger than some beds I've slept in. No idea if they were functional when they were tossed. During the community association event, one guy toting maybe a 50" screen was asking people if they wanted it because it still worked. When someone asked why he was getting rid of it, he said he got such a good deal on a bigger one he had to get it. There's the consumer economy and planned obsolescence in action.

In other news, laptop domestication seems to be well in hand. I'm still getting used to the exact feel of the track pad, and sometimes still like to use a mouse. The screen is lovely! I did some file organization and discovered terabytes of duplicated data. I didn't notice the slower external hard drive before, but I am now. Working on photos in Lightroom is fast. I'm trying to learn more about Lightroom, most recently exploring the mysteries of the tone curve, which I haven't used.

I was down in my library the other day, and found this book. I had no memory of reading it, or even of buying it, but since it's sitting with two other books I remembered buying in Newfoundland last year, I'm guess that was it.

The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson.

It made me think about photography. As it turns out, almost none of my photos are the subject of the book. He is talking about social photos, specifically those taken for social media like Instagram or Facebook, or their many ilks. There's no real value to them, other than to say here I am and this is what I am looking at. They are worth essentially no attention, and get exactly that. I've seen people scrolling through Instagram, flicking their thumb to scroll the feed so fast no photo can be on screen for as long as a second. It's all advertising and posers posing. And people wonder why I don't put photos there anymore. It reads a bit like a scholarly article, complete with many quotes from various authorities. I'll add it to the pile of books intended for the used book store. Or arrange a meet up and I'll give it to you.

I'd like to think at least some of my photos are of more value than that; worth someone looking at them for maybe a few seconds at least. For some of the abstracts they might wonder what it is or enjoy looking at a photo of kids doing something interesting, or a beautiful woman smiling, or a lovely landscape of a place they'll never go to. Other photographers might wonder how I got that particular photo. Sometimes a photo inspires words from me, which might or might not be a good thing.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago

This needs a bit of explanation. The Sprawl is local independent journalism. Jeremy Klaszus is the founder and editor. I met him at a Fish Creek event early June, and we chatted a bit about obsolete technologies. He has a small printing press mounted on a tricycle. So cool.

 

Flower

Landscape

Dino related