Ass not..!

A Sunday morning walk with the dogs in the woods sure does wonders for the soul. The fresh autumn mountain air works like an eraser on a blackboard. It just cleans everything out, ready to start anew. Plus I can pee when I want without causing a scene. If I pee in the woods and nobody sees me, am I still indecent..? Food for thought... Then, when reality hits me in the groin as I return home, the world seems to have it's suspenders on too tight, suffering from a permanent wedgie. The moral plague of the right seems to be permeating every area of modern life. It seems that nudity in painting is as frowned upon as exposing yourself in a school yard, or worse.

I have these friends, Jimmy and Julie who have been together for the longest time and who are both artists in their own right. Jimmy has had a long fruitful career as an artist and is still pretty active for an 80 something year old man, showing in many galleries. Last spring, they were approached, through their gallery, by the Bombardier Museum, which wanted to exhibit a retrospective of Jimmy's lifetime work. Cool..! They thought as they started to prepare and communicate with the initiators of this great offer from the people at Bombardier. Now, anyone who's ever put together an art show of some magnitude together will tell you it's not a walk in the park.  There are a lot of things to consider. From framing to publicity, transport and what not, especially for a retrospective spanning a half century of creativity, II's a daunting task. So, after three months worth of work with an incessant communication tango between the gallery, themselves and Bombardier, the show was finally canceled at the last moment  because it included some paintings which depicted nudity. A lot of which were accepted from the get-go. Honestly, I've photographed many paintings of nudes in my day and Jimmy Jones' nudes  (aka Henry Wanton Jones)  are not what you would call graphic or provocative. Judge for yourselves..

Someone pulled the plug deeming that this would have a major impact on our society for the rest of our lives......Thank you for sparing us  from the ill effects of painted female genitalia. We will for ever be in your debt for shielding us from this evil. Amen..!
Honestly I have to admit that I despise Bombardier. I think they're corporate welfare cry babies who have no problem getting handouts from the government but will stop at nothing to rip us off. The Montreal subway saga is a good example if you've been following it as I have. Furthermore,  I've yet to see  somebody suffer a cardiac arrest while gazing at Renoir's ''Les Baigneuses''  at the Louvre. '' Someone please call 911. Timmy just fainted when he saw what resembled his mother's ass hanging on a wall ''.

Yet Bombadier's grown up toy's, like Seadoos, all terrain vehicles, and that all new popular three wheel motorcycle for aging James Dean wannabees are probably responsible for more deaths than the graphic pictorial description of female or male organs. This is not factoring in the pollution and noise factor. In fact, when a town in the Eastern Townships wanted to pass a law prohibiting such noisy polluting contraptions from their lake, they were met by Bombardier's legal team who threatened to sue their ass to hell. And so, not having the resources to bang heads with a corporate giant, the municipality backed off.

Bombardier in the end, did offer my friends a 2000$ settlement for their hard work. Gee thanks..!
When calculated between the two of them for three months work it winds up to just about 2.00$ per hour. Not the equivalent of working in a Central American sweatshop, but close to. Of course the gallery,with no profit in view, discretely bowed out, even though they instigated the whole process. Meanwhile, my spurned friends are pondering some form of legal action, as they rightfully should. Corporations like Bombardier think they can get way with anything. And, by donating heavily to political campaign funds, they usually do.

It's up to us to keep them in check, anyway we can before they start dictating how we should run our lives, deciding what's acceptable or not. And believe me they will, if we let them....Just like they did for my friends and that municipality in the Townships.

Footnote: You can see Henry Wanton Jones' work here at http://www.galerievalentin.com/

GIMP

This week I was going to make a big fuss about this less than stellar Bastarache commission, but I thought everybody had enough of politics. I sure have..! Suffice to say that once again we are being screwed over by a bunch of lawyers to the hefty tune of 6 million smackeroos. At least for that kind of money they could try and make it interesting and possibly funny. The plot stinks, there’s no drama and I doubt that any of the leading roles will make it to the Oscars.

This morning ...very early ,  I started playing around with my GIMP. For those who don’t know what it is, I can assure you it’s not an acronym for a body part. It’s Gnu Image Manipulation Program.

GIMP strives to  stand up to Photoshop, but in my honest opinion it’s better. Why..?  Because it’s free....You heard me right. Free as it doesn’t cost a cent.

My first try at GIMP dates back a few years, I wasn’t impressed then, 15 years  and more  of working with Photoshop had spoiled me and I thought at that point that the learning curve would be too much to handle. But boy..! has this little program come of age. Fast, efficient and with all the trimmings you would come to expect from expensive image software.

True, some of their filters could use some more adjustable variables  but to compensate, it comes with extras like GAP, the Gimp Animation Package, enabling you to conjure up simple yet effective animations and also a plugin browser.

Gimp has a huge dedicated following and it’s very easy to get started and to get help like tutorials, tips and tricks to enhance, transform your images or create new ones.

GIMP is now available for all platforms, Linux (where it started), Mac OSX and Windows.

You can read about it and get it at http://www.gimp.org/
You'll be amazed at the features included in this freebie and how it packs a punch.

Here are a couple of interesting examples of it’s fun filter capabilities...

You pros out there might find this quite obvious, but believe me there's enough in GIMP to satisfy everybody. 

Cubism filter

Old photo filter

Page curl filter

Slide filter

Footnote: Sorry for the short blog this week. Time got ahead of me as usual. 

Omar and me

My friend Omar is from Venezuela or Chavezuela, as I like to call it, just to tease him a bit. Omar, which seems somewhat out of place for a latin name is understandable once you realize that Venezuela is very cosmopolitan, There's even a town called Colonia Tovar where Germans settled in 1841 and kept all their cultural heritage.This would also explain why Omar's wife, who also originates from Venezuela, is named Heidi.

Omar and I talk about a lot of things, especially politics. We share the same values even if we hail from  very different backgrounds. Omar had a rough life. At age twelve he was working in a factory 30km from home where he would sleep on a cardboard box at night. And you thought you had it tough when your freshly unwrapped Christmas toy came without batteries..!

Omar is curious and well read. He still goes back to Venezuela every year where most of his family still lives. He settled here 6 years ago because is daughter wanted to go to McGill. Working hard, he did good for himself and his family here. He is a strong supporter of Chavez and talks about how much he's done for his people. All I knew about Hugo Chavez was through the eyes of the North American media. A ruthless dictator, a despot who would stop at nothing to hold on to power, crushing opponents left and right.

Turns out that, even if not perfect (no politician is) he's done so much for the poor in his country that he provoked the ire of the middle and the ruling upper classes while sustaining a devout following from the majority. I had come to respect the guy because he firmly stood up against  the U.S. and G.W. Bush, my favorite all time moron.

As much as I tried, I had trouble finding a balanced view of President Chavez, even in the Latin America Herald Tribune which had a sidebar that read '' Sarah Palin in 2012...Vote here'' which pretty much shows where they stand. I did however find this link to a book about Chavez if you want to read it...  http://www.ru.org/book-reviews/coup-against-chavez-what-really-happened.html

Omar is always the joker. I think this is why we get along so well. We had this ongoing little story  where the first job he landed in Quebec was in a mariachi band, playing in a ''Cabane à sucre''. Akin to Ozzie Osborne  playing the Place des Arts if you will. Major culture clash..! We both dislike mariachi bands. He, because of their lack of musical sophistication I assume. I, because of a necessary grocery shopping spree after a night of heavy drinking. My local supermarket was having an ''Old El Paso'' promotion with an extremely loud mariachi band, which had the effect of turning my splitting headache into a cross bearing of biblical proportions. I hastily left the supermarket with a trimmed down version of my list.... Two cans of clam chowder and a broccoli.

So, as I so often do to amuse myself and friends, I decided it was time for Omar to get Photoshoped into his imaginary persona. First, I needed a candid shot which a friend took for me on his Iphone.

Omar

Mariachis

The typeface and the colors had to be of dubious taste to fit the bill. The hit song ''Fuego in lo culo'' refers to a burning fart (The kind you get after a hefty plate of beans).  And voilà...!

He 'll probably piss in his pants when he gets it on Monday, not being aware of my devious graphic intentions for the weekend.

Due date

A bad thing happened yesterday. I was coming back from my usual Saturday  early morning walk with the dogs (we've been doing this for a year now) when, for no apparent reason, a neighborhood dog from across the road, bolted from behind a hedge and ran into the street after us, just as a truck was coming... My first reaction was to try and ward him off. But, having my two dogs on leashes by the narrow side of the road, I had no other choice but to stay put and keep them out of harm's way. In a flash, the miniature bulldog was run over, by the truck's wheels and, as  Omer Simpson's luck would have it, the truck was pulling a huge utility trailer that also ran over the diminutive canine. The owner of the dog was devastated and his wife was holding her head in disbelief while crying out the pooch's name. I was in shock.
Pookie was his name and he was no more as he lay upside down with his nerves still flinching.
Those of us who have pets will concur that this is by far our worst nightmare. I replayed this event over and over in my mind. A lot of what-ifs started floating around. What if the dog had been tied ? What if the truck had been a small vehicle instead with the ability to swerve? What if we had passed there a minute later or even 30 seconds before ? No matter...The shit came down like it had been planned by some evil puppet master pulling the right strings at the right time to make this all happen. Coincidence or synchronicity.....Jung himself would be hard pressed to answer that one.
I've often mused that there's a ledger out there where everyone of us has a termination date with a detailed description of how, when and where we will meet our fate. I remember vividly this women in a restaurant in Montreal, having an intimate birthday dinner with her hubby when a dislodged panel of concrete from 18 stories up, came hurtling down through the atrium, crushing the poor lady's head to death while her practically unscathed husband stood there, paralyzed from shock. Our Overseers have a strange sense of humor it seems to make these things happen. Especially when they start throwing lightning bolts left and right, occasionally striking some poor sap on an outing. Sadly enough, these kind of events always seem to happen to quiet, unsuspecting, average Joes. Oil executives,
corrupt politicians, bank presidents, murderers, rapists and pedophiles always escape the wrath of fate it seems, like some force field of immunity. Maybe they made a pact where in some twisted way they'll keep on living to make the rest of us suffer.  Again with the weird sense of humor from whomever is scripting this drama play we call life.
So kiss your spouse, hug your kids and your pets every day. Life is a lot like a disappearing act at a magic show...Now you see it...Now you don't.



Footnote: Since this blog is a little on the dark side, I decided to leave you with something a tad lighter.

This guy is so accident prone he's lucky to still be around.
http://www.wimp.com/classicbloopers/

Bad Art

I knew Bad Art was trouble the minute I first laid eyes on him. He had been left behind by a visiting friend who had previously been served an ultimatum by his wife '' It goes and it never comes back''. Bad Art  has a lot of relatives out there so he probably comes from a lineage of sorts.

Bad Art

Our cohabitation didn't start off too well. First off, he didn't get along with the other Arts in the house and he certainly didn't endear himself by hiding in the dryer and frightening my poor wife Carole half to death one afternoon (partially my fault for putting him there..lol). The dogs weren't too crazy about him either. Charlie almost pissed on him. I tried hard to find him some use around the house.

He was good at scaring the crows for a while but he was also scaring the rest of the wildlife, not to mention my next door neighbor. How could I change Bad Art to Good Art..? Was this at all feasible without the use of booze or perception altering drugs..?
So, in a last ditch attempt to make Bad Art blend in and fit in, I told him : ''Art, what you have is an image problem. Maybe a make over would smooth out the rough edges and make you more palatable to the rest of us like on one of those reality tv shows.'' My first try failed miserably. A cap and sun glasses didn't really hide the fact that Art was a bad ass. If anything he looked even scarier than ever. Not the kind of Art you would like to come across in a dimly light museum corridor.

Bad Ass

Maybe a shave..? I thought. It could give him a sense of self worth. True, Art didn't have that much of a beard , but a little proper grooming can go a long way in rebuilding one's self confidence. It worked for Mickey Rourke..!

Close shave

And that squirrel tail like hairdo had to change. A little mousse and presto..? Well almost a decent look. Art's disgruntled grin, a cross between Billy Idol's sneer and the locked jaw of a pit-bull was still overshadowing the partial make over. A nice saccharin smile would certainly help but would no doubt be too much of a stretch and could possibly kill poor Art, as he would crack up like an over boiled egg. So I opted for a grin instead.

New and improved

After all of this, something was amiss. Bad Art had changed physically but was still in essence '' Bad Art''. Maybe is problem was deeper than I thought. How he perceived himself might have had more to do with it than how we perceived him...Maybe..? So, I decided to show him what Good Art looked like. He seemed interested at first, but I soon discovered that it would have little or no effect on the dude. He was conceived that way and to go against his creator's intent, would have brought on his complete demise. And so, as expected, he reverted to his old self.

In light of my failure to convert Bad Art, the only solution I was left with was to send him packing. Problem is that, Bad Art doesn't travel or move well. Having no arms and legs doesn't help that much either. And that pretty much ruled out hitchhiking. Finally, almost in desperation, I finally found Art a home where he seemed to belong at long last...the garbage..! He fit in there like a turd in the sewer. I just love happy endings..! 

Moral of the story: Bad Art will always be Bad Art, no matter how you try to pass it off.

Dogma

OK I admit it....I'm faceless on Facebook, I'm not a twit on Twitter, I don't text on my telephone and I've been skipping calls on Skype lately. So, to you who send me invites to one or all of these, it's not that I don't care if I don't reply, it's just that I prefer to spend what little quality time I have with my wife and my two best friends. My two best friends are always there for me and they don't really give a shit what kind of day it's been, they're always cheerful, ready to go anywhere or just lay around. They won't ask for favors or talk about their shrunken portfolios, their aching muscles, and they certainly will not ask me to go out of my way to fund a needy cause or help them move heavy furniture. My best friends are Fanny and Charlie. They're dogs...and I mean that literally.

Fanny

Fanny is the eldest at three years. She's a female schnauzer that was somewhat rescued from a pet shop. By rescued I mean she had been there for four months and , not being sold, she was in danger of being euthanized. She was quite fearful when we got her and very scared of kids. I guess that being in a pet shop for so long she got her share of little devils banging on her cage to get her attention. Fanny's a terrier, meaning that every outing is an adventure in odor land. Sure, she'll play for a while but soon enough she will resume to sniffing and tearing up the backyard for anything from roots to insects. This is why our backyard looks like a lunar surface only with spots of grass. Quite the character, she'll be as docile as can be but in a flash, if she's frustrated, she'll show it immediately with an unmistakable growl. Even so, when she comes up to me and puts her tiny head on my lap and her furry little paw on my hand, I melt like ice cream in the sun. I remember long nights when she was young and frail, I would spend long hours with her outside until she finally did her business and we could finally both go to bed. A few weeks back, while in our backyard playing, she escaped my attention for a few seconds. The next thing I heard were car horns and brakes. Rushing to the front of the house, I saw Fanny crouched down across the busy street, terrified but unhurt. My heart stopped that day and I hope I never have to relive something as dreadful.

Charlie

Charlie on the other hand is a mixed breed. He was bought off a squeegee kid in town by one of my teenage stepdaughter's friends. Unable to care for him and desperately trying to find him a home amongst his also not too bright friends, we took Charlie in because he was emaciated and had diarrhea after being bounced around for a week or so. Charlie was only 8 weeks old at the time. The cutest little pup you've ever seen. He was so cute that when we went to the park to walk him, he would spend most of his time in the air being cuddled by everyone who met him. We thought for sure at that point that he was a Jack Russell, but Charlie grew and grew and grew again. He could be a giant Jack Russell, if such a breed existed. He now weighs about a hundred pounds and hasn't lost a bit of his regal looks. I think of him as the Brad Pitt of dogs. A face like you would see on a major dog food brand. Often enough when we go for walks, people stop us and ask us what bread he is. Our answer is always the same...We don't know. Or as the vet put it , he's a Heinz 57....57 varieties rolled up in one.  Unlike Fanny, Charlie likes to play a lot and especially  with his  favorite balls, rubber or tennis,, which he keeps in a hole in the stream in the back. We play this little game where he drops the ball from an elevated point in he backyard and I return it using a golf club. He can play hours without stopping so It's no surprise that he comes to beckon me in the house with a ball in his mouth every half hour or so.

Fanny and Charlie's playground

As you can see, my network up here is mostly four legged and extremely satisfying. I'm a strong believer in zoo therapy and if not for my dogs bringing me down to earth a lot of times, I would spend way too much time in my brain. You might have done yoga with a master or even meditated in a Buddhist temple in the far reaches of Tibet where the yeti roams free but as zen as you might think you are, you'll never be as much in the moment as my dogs are. So, if you feel the need to network with me, there's a new device out called the Te-le-pho-ne. You can call anytime and by some miracle of modern technology, you'll be able to hear my voice. Or, better yet, why don't you come and spend some time with me and my wife and my two best friends. I'm sure we'll have a grand old time going for walks in the woods. Believe me we won't  need a keyboard to say how good we feel, because we'll be savoring each precious moment just like my four legged friends have taught me.

Footnote: The Dalai Lama once said:  "We anxiously think of the future while forgetting the present to the extent that we experience neither."

Clean it..!

For this week I thought I'd give you guys and girls some cleaning tips. I'm sure you clean just about everything in your house from bookshelves to window sills. Yet there is one item in your midst that you use as often as the kitchen stove but for some odd reason you never thought of cleaning it. I'm talking about your computer and physically cleaning it. The fans revving up faster and more often is a dead giveaway that it's getting clogged A few weeks back a friend of mine wanted me to fix is computer after Vista went blank and wouldn't come on. I reinstalled another system on it...a Linux of course, but I told him I would have to clean the inside of his computer. This particular computer had been purchased a few years back and was sitting on the floor next to his desk. Before the Vista blowout, the fans inside were coming on all the time, making a not so pleasant racket. Well, when I opened his computer he was shocked to see how much dust it had accumulated in that short a period of time. After the procedure the computer ran as silently as if it had just left the store. This is an all too common problem and can be detrimental to your computer's performance. So in the hope that this helps a bit. here's the way to a clean box.
Just keep in mind that if for some reason you turn your computer into an over sized paperweight after attempting this, my lawyers, Dewey, Screwem and Howe say that I can deny all responsibility.

Housing interior

For this example I'll use my trusty IBM. This is what you'll need...compressed air in a can, cotton swabs, a straw and an ordinary vacuum cleaner. Unplugging the computer would be a great idea for starters...Duh'..! Opening the case is pretty straight forward on most computers (mine has a latch) but you might need to unscrew the side panel from the back to get access. Refer to your owners manual or get it off the Net. Once the panel is removed you can start cleaning. The compressed air will disperse most of the dust and using the cotton swab you can dislodge a little more. Just be extremely careful not to accidentally pull any wires and slightly touching the exposed metal of the box with a finger before starting will eliminate any unwanted static. The areas you have to look for are the power supply fan, any other utility fan, the heat sink and it's attached fan.

Heat sink with fan removed

The heat sink is the usual culprit and may require that you remove the fan to really clean it out if the compressed air fails to do so. For my friend's computer, the fan was clipped on to the heat sink so it was easy to remove. Mine had four little screws to fasten it. I used an ordinary vacuum cleaner to suck the dirt out but it's safer to attach a drinking straw with masking tape to to the nozzle and gently run it across the fins of the heat sink. Reattach the fan, close the box and you're done.

Heat sink

For the more adventurous types, once the heat sink fan is off, it's not a big deal to remove the heat sink itself not only to clean it properly but also to change the heat paste (every 4 years or so ) between the CPU (central processing unit) and the heat sink. This inexpensive paste is paramount to the heat exchange and if left to dry can lead to serious damage.

CPU is revealed after heat sink removal

For those of you who have laptops...you're shit out of luck...just kidding.
I wouldn't attempt to open it if I were you. I did it once for a friend and it took me four hours to get access to what I wanted and two to put it back together. The straw and vacuum trick will work a little.
Just be careful not to push it in the heat vent in the back. Laptops are notorious for sucking up dust ( my friend's laptop had felt like compressed dust blocking the ventilation) so you might want to take it to a dealer to get it cleaned especially if you find it getting hotter than usual.

Keeping your computer well ventilated and raised off the floor will help to keep it clean and run smoothly.

Footnote: Additional tips.
Always back up your important stuff. Nothing is for ever and this goes for computer components. Uncheck the ''RESTART AFTER A POWER FAILURE'' box in your power management controls. Spikes in the power when it comes back on can do serious and sometimes irreparable damage to your computer.