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.

Give it away

40 billionaires pledge to give half their fortunes to charity...Humm..!
The net was all abuzz with this grandiose announcement this week. From my perspective, I greet this with the same excitement that would bring on the fortuitous encounter between a garden snail and a ladybug. While I'm almost certain at least some good will come of this pledge initiated by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, it's most definitely certain that this money will wind up in the hands of rich foundations whilst the neighborhood soup kitchens will still be struggling and looking for handouts.

The people listed on the roster have always gravitated in a sphere that seldom had any contact with the real world. Buffet after this massive give away will be left with a paltry 460 million. I hope he manages to get by with that measly amount...trimming down on planned space flights and selling a few castles might do it. It's noble for these rich cats to share the wealth, or so it seems, but it leaves me with a sense of unnerving suspicion.
How does one exactly become a billionaire..? Like the old adage " You can't make an omelet without breaking any eggs " I'm not sure if these people didn't wreck a few lives on their illustrious way to the top of the heap or shield their riches from the tax man in offshore bank accounts. I know for a fact that Gates ran Microsoft with business practices that rivaled the Mafia, strong-arming distributors and clients alike to the point where there are lawsuits pending against his company all over the world. As some guy put it bluntly on his blog "Gates should give the money back to people who spent their lives trying to make Windows work "


How many people in this world struggle to make ends meet and yet open the dismal contents of their wallets to charitable causes every year..? And what about those unsung heroes who give up their livelihood on a daily basis to help the needy in the worst places of the globe..? Of course they rarely get exposure because they don't own an island, a private turbo jet or a multitude of different companies. So the ultra rich are cornering the charity market and getting all the media hype....again..!


I remember when Jeff Bezos was made man of the year by Time magazine. He ran Amazon and was still 2 million in the red at that period. I thought to myself " What the f...." Is this the best we can do..? Forget about the tireless aid worker or the courageous doctor who leaves a very lucrative practice in the States to vaccinate orphans in Africa, we're talking big business here.


Somehow I equate this whole charity bonanza to the same level as McDonald's building hospitals for sick kids or Walmart giving away Xmas basket. It leaves a not so pleasant aftertaste in my mouth...just like a bad hamburger.


So basically, the Rockefellers of this world can do what they want with their riches to redeem themselves, just don't expect me to jump for joy or be impressed. If you really want to score points with me, disappear like Cat Stevens did...leaving fame and fortune behind. At least then, me and the rest of the world won't have you in our collective faces as a constant reminder of society's massive inequities.



Footnote: Agree or disagree...? Please leave a comment.

Rat out..!

The buzz this week was hard to miss unless you've been living somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan for the last five years. Wikileaks and it's founder, Julian Assange were plastered all over the media for bringing to light official documents pertaining to misconduct during the war in...where else...Afghanistan. Snitches, informants, whistle-blowers and whatever you want to call them seem to be all over the place these days. Of course the grand daddy of the lot was none other than Judas Iscariot. According to the bible. he delivered a fellow by the name of Jesus to the Romans. How a Porto Rican found his way to Jerusalem I have no clue. Interesting story but the plot is a little weak. My first real encounter with a snitch happened during a test in first grade. I casually blurted out the answer to a question to the student sitting next to me who immediately pointed an accusing finger and calling the teacher said '' Miss, he said the answer out loud ''. This was also my first encounter with the yard stick, receiving a couple of blows to my bottom for my indiscretion.The teacher obviously did not question the snitch's credibility and this is unfortunately the case nowadays. The media often jumps on the bandwagon and a frenzy erupts before any informant credibility can be established. And, in some cases, with the new and improved security measures, contrary to our justice system, the accused have to establish their innocence, being presumed guilty from the get go.This has happened all so fast on numerous occasions, especially involving alleged cases of child abuse. A lot of families, lives, reputations have been ruined by hearsay and non credible witnesses. Also, some people's moral grounds are someone else's playground. I remember these two old ladies in British Colombia who complained to the police that their neighbor walked around naked in his house and they found this offensive. When the whole thing went to court, the judge inquired has to how the two spinsters could see the naked man in the house since he lived 300 feet away. '' We can see him with our binoculars '' they replied. The case was thrown out. With that being said, I don't doubt the validity of whistle-blowing one bit. We need brave individuals to come forth and report anomalies or misconduct from governments, multinationals, institutions and individuals. Often enough, these people seek some form of anonymity. I say No..! I f you want to point an accusing finger at anyone we should know who you are in order to establish your credibility. With technology today, it's way too easy to start the rumor mill going and inflict serious harm to people who are just going about their daily lives. Imagine for one second that you were in Toronto on business during the G8 summit. You're walking downtown thinking of arranging this important meeting when your foot hits a brick on the sidewalk. Finding this odd, you pick up because you don't want anybody else to hurt their big toe. At that moment a couple on vacation snaps a picture of you holding the brick. Unfortunately, there's an identifiable Mc Donald's window in the background and you're wearing a germ protective mask they gave you at the hospital in case your flue turns out to be contagious. They post their picture of you with brick in hand and masked on Facebook, thinking they've photographed a real life anarchist. The Toronto police find this while scouring the web for info and through some face recognition software, they id you, review your credit card transactions, find your address and pick you up at your hotel for questioning. Of course you deny the whole thing but they bring up your participation in a protest against the seal hunt during your college years in the 70's. They allow you one phone call, so in desperation you call your wife on her cellphone but it's buried somewhere between a chocolate bar and a dry cleaning bill deep inside the bowels of her purse. So you leave a message on her voice box hoping that she remembers the access code.
Basically you could rot in jail from anywhere between 48 hours to a month, whith-held on reasons of national security. We've all heard about the Stasi years in East Germany when even family and friends were snitching on each other, creating a wave of collective paranoia. Any idiot with a camera equipped cellphone is a potential snitch. Just look at how many people after 9/11 reported seeing Bin Laden either driving a taxi in Manhattan or buying fruit in a seven-eleven in Boca Raton. So, as my father always says...'' Don't believe everything you read and only half of what you see''.

Footnote: The video above is an hilarious SNL skit with Robert De Niro where college students have phoned in to report terrorists.

Wake up call

This week I'd like to talk to you about the worst torture instrument ever concocted in history by human intelligence. Yes folks....the alarm clock. WikipediA describes it as a clock that is designed to make a loud noise at a specific time which means too early and too loud in the morning for most of us. Actually the concept is not new. It is rumored that the Greek philosopher Plato had a similar device to signal the start of his lectures. Jumping ahead a bit,the production of the infamous alarm clock was halted in 1942 as factories were converted to aid in the war effort. However, the geniuses in power at the time, ordered production resumed because of a high rate of absenteeism in the work force . This appears to be why we all get shaken out of our peaceful sleep mode, a hyper production schedule during the second world war. Where would the world be without wars...? Somewhere between Eden and Paradise I suspect. But that's another subject just down the road.
Anyway, this ode to the ingenuity of capitalism which has been ensconced in practically every bedroom in North America continues to prod us without mercy on a daily basis. The loud repeated beeps are especially irritating and reminiscent of sirens that sent people running for shelter during air raids . Most of them now have the radio option so instead of being jarred with incoherent decibels, you can wake up to Led Zeppelin's Black Dog or a newscaster describing an horrific crime seen. Tried it..didn't like it. I remember in my salad days not having an alarm clock. I did have a tv in my bedroom so, always the tinkerer, I decided to purchase a plug-in timer to turn on the set at the time of my choosing. Proudly, I enabled the whole system on a Saturday, activating the timer to 9 am the next day for a test and proceeded with my day and evening. In those days my roommate and I often went out to clubs and indulged in alcohol and nature's best, coming home in the wee hours to crash. Sunday morning I awoke in a total sweat from a apocalyptic nightmare. I dreamed I was being poked by a horde of terrifying blood thirsty demons in a fiery pit with no possible escape. Turns out that my tv had been turned on as planned but that I unknowingly had selected a channel that featured one of those evangelical Sunday preachers. He was sermonizing his flock on the perils of sin. Obviously this dogmatic lecture had pervaded my unconscious dream state, prompting the aforementioned nightmare. Too bad I wasn't tuned in to a porn channel...I would've never wanted to get up. I often wonder why nobody thought of using the sound of washing waves on the seashore or the melodic daybreak chirping of small birds in lieu of that cataclysmic beep. My wife says that we need a strong wake up sound. I think it's just conditioning. It would be nice to have a radio channel that would be entirely devoted to softly waking people with a soothing voice, prompting you to cheerfully rise and shine. A lot of people use their cellphones as alarm clocks these days. My wife does and believe me it's also annoying. When she first started doing this without telling me, I would quickly jump from bed and scramble in the dark to get the phone, thinking that at that early time in the morning, it had to be an emergency.
We do have an internal biological clock not unlike the one in our computers. The problem is we have forgotten how to use it. And even if we did, I don't think it would be compatible with today's hectic pace. So we'll continue to suffer at the hands of these dreaded machines which are a constant reminder of how little sleep we get. According to recent studies, our current lifestyle is listed as the number one culprit in sleep loss and the side effects are..well....alarming (no pun intended...). So much so that you''ll want to use public transportation instead of facing off in the frantic morning rush hour, battling for your share of the road with a multitude of sleep deprived drivers. http://www.sleep-deprivation.com/ is where you wan to go to find out more.
Finally, if you find yourself or someone you care for missing out on valuable sleep time like I once did, consider this a friendly wake up call.

Footnote: The picture, "Running out" was done in Adobe Photoshop with the "Liquify" filter. It's a fun tool to use and it's most often used for face reconstruction. An Omni light filter was added for a more dramatic effect as was the drop shadow on the melted clock dial. And of course, having forgotten to wipe my night table, a lot of retouching was done.

Hip to be round

It seems to me that we humans never quite decided which of these two forms we should have adopted in our daily lives, the square or the circle. We have round wine glasses that are neatly stored in square cabinets, round lighting fixtures for rectangular rooms, round clocks on walls with four corners and we serve square meals on round plates.If you're a cowboy, after a roundup you go to a square dance Most of us live in square boxes we call homes, travel to work in smaller mobile boxes with wheels and earn our pay in cubicles.
No wonder we feel boxed in. This brings me to R.Buckminster Fuller or Bucky as he was affectionately called. Bucky was a strange kind of genius and set out to prove that we had it all wrong. Why was housing square..? There are no squares in nature with the possible exception of the weekend bird watchers. The people who are closest to nature because they depend on it for their basic sustenance live in round shelters. The North American indian had the teepee or wigwam and the Eskimos had igloos. So Bucky started to experiment with spheres and soon came up with the geodesic dome. His idea was to mass produce these half globes so that everybody, even people in third world countries, could afford a nearly indestructible, weather resistant dwelling. His plan almost made it to fruition but his greedy investors who were evidently not as altruistic, pulled the plug on the project when they couldn't see eye to eye. Bucky went on with his experiments and soon found other venues for his domes, notably the US pavilion for Expo 67 in Montreal.
He also went on to produce a fantastic weird looking car that was reminiscent of an airplane fuselage, the dymaxion car. This car was so futuristic that he was barred from driving it into the city, causing a scene each time he would take it for a spin.


He also wanted to mass produce his vehicle and this certainly would have changed the history of the automobile if it hadn't been for a tragic accident involving one of his potential investors who died in a crash on a test drive. So Fuller was a visionary. He spent most of his time lecturing and underlying the need for us to conserve our precious unrenewable resources.
It was during one such lecture that he came up with the name spaceship earth, alluding to our limited resources. His dome dwellings never caught on except for a few companies strewn across the states who still produce them on demand.
However, If you've gone camping with a tent in your lifetime, you'll have experienced the transition between the square tents with the inordinate amount of ground spikes and the dome tent which seems more spacious when it's actually smaller and can easily be moved, even when set up, thanks to Bucky's ideas.
The basic idea behind all of this is that we need more efficient, climate change ready houses capable of riding out the worst of storms. Unless we want roof flying to become the national past time for the mid west during the tornado season. They also need to be on higher ground. Too much water is already a problem in some parts of the world. There is a tendency to build energy efficient partially buried houses called burmed housing. But unless it's as waterproofed as a submarine and can float out of harm's way in short notice, I woundn't consider it an option. There is a company in Japan called International Dome Design who built a whole village of domes. It's quite a sight to behold and unlike their american counterparts ( talk about bad design, some look like a hybrid between a colonial house and a dome) they have a flair for good taste and some of their products are simply outstanding. You can see them with floor plans at http://www.i-domehouse.com/case.html
So we might have to live like hobbits in a not too distant future. As for the more distant generations, I suspect their houses will be mobile, having to revert to the hunter gatherer style of life, looking for resources like water or simply escaping the wrath of a furious mother nature. Odd that we seem to be going around in circles after years of cutting corners.

Zoom in

Thank God this week has ended..! It wasn't bad enough that the whole province of Quebec was blanketed by a humidity tsunami, but also that my 83 year old mother was urgently rushed to the hospital while my 85 year old dad was left to fend for himself at home. Thankfully every thing's back to normal for now.
This week's blog might not interest everybody. So what else is new...!
I write off the cuff, meaning I really don't prepare or give it much thought until the deadline looms. This particular blog is the perfect example.
I've always been interested in photography at large but especially the outer rims of the process. Macro photography is one such area. The name can be a tad confusing. Basically it implies that your using a macro lens to zoom in to a specific subject or part of it. It is sort of between regular photography and micro photography which uses a microscope. It falls in a universe all by itself sort of like Pee Wee Herman.
Most digital SLR (single lens reflex) lenses can't focus close enough to give you a macro image. You either need a special macro lens or either a bellows extension device or as in my case a tube extension. This is where the whole thing becomes a bit dicey. A bellows or tube extension will render your camera electronics like focus metering virtually useless. However on the good side, auto exposure will work and you'll be able to review your shot immediately and readjust if necessary.
This first shot is just to show how far into a subject you can go with an extension device. On the left you'll see how close I got to the ruler with my macro lens.On the left is the same ruler but using an extension tube between my lens and the camera.

Pretty powerful..!
Let's put this to work. Obviously I was going to need a lot of light. This is one of the major drawbacks of macro photography. The closer you are to your subject the more light you need. A lot of people use flash for this purpose but to me it looks a bit unnatural. I prefer working in natural light but since I'm getting really close, the slightest movement of either the camera or the subject can result in a total blur.
Just like Lindsay Lohan about to go back into rehab.
This picture is of a flower bud. Don't ask me what flower, I simply don't know not being a very flower knowledgeable kind of guy. You can observe that not to much is in focus what we refer to as depth of field. This can be a plus in macro simply because you can isolate the subject against a mysterious looking background.

This next picture is of a stamen. As you can see, it can easily become an abstraction if it were not for the bare hint of reality showing.

This next one is a shot of the rust on an antique stove we kept in the yard near the stream. Flat and steady surfaces are a great way to get into macro photography. They are abundant and easy to capture. The only thing you have to look out for is not casting a shadow on the subject with the camera or the lens since you're only an inch or two away. A steady tripod and an integrated timer to trip the shutter will help immensely. Or if you prefer, a six pack of Heinekens will steady your nerves.

This pic is of the interior of a computer hard disk. I took it apart to see what it looked like inside, something that got me in trouble on numerous occasions when I was a kid, taking apart all sorts of things, a lot of times, aggravating my parents. The phone incident didn't wash down too well.

Basically, you can have a lot of fun doing this and any subject is fair game. Sometimes it will be frustrating, other times you'll rejoice with amazement at your results. There are a lot of sites on the web devoted to macro. I was somewhat disappointed looking it up because to me, a lot of them are only satisfied with using a standard macro lens which will not zoom in enough to totally immerse you in a place of unseen wonders and awe.

Footnote: Most digital cameras have a macro mode that you can enable in the settings. It won't (depending on the manufacturer) be state of the art macro, but it can get you started.

More than heights

If you remember my first attempt at blogging, you will recall that we settled up north in the Quebec Laurentians in the town of Morin Heights. This quaint little town is a cozy blend of old english sods, artsy fartsy artists, stuck-in-the-sixties hippy like off-the-grid anarchists mixed in with a dash of nouveaux riches for good measure. So for this blog,I decided to take a walk and give you a small glimpse of our fair town with a few snapshots.
MH has it's own municipal beach, right at the entrance of downtown Although I dare anybody to find one grain of sand there. It's more of a swimming hole than anything else, but it seems quite popular even with all the the restrictions.



Of course some people prefer the privacy of their own pool. Especially if you have a thing for huge inflatable dogs and the town is already abuzz with rumors of you and your plastic best friend.


The downtown core itself is extremely minimalistic with one sidewalk and three churches a few meters apart on the same side.


Which leads me to believe there must be a massive pile up on Sunday mornings. The Methodists, the Catholics and the Anglicans all bumping in to one another in their Sunday best. Judging by the cemetery, it would seem there are more people buried than living in town. Also, they seem to be anticipating a deadly plague of some sorts by the look of the numerous unoccupied graves.




We also have our fair share of restaurants. You have to remember that Morin Heights is crossed by the 329, the scenic route from Lachute to Mont Tremblant. Very popular with motorcyclists, RVs and the occasional lone cyclist with a cause.


In the centre of it all is Mickey's. Mickey's is an institution here. They have a weird combo business consisting of a diner, a laundromat and a shoe store. They also sell BBQs and propane gas and the owner drives the town's only taxi vehicle when he's not selling mukluks or fireworks.



There's a local bar where all the yokels hang out. This place has probably seen more assholes than a proctologist. When I took the picture I was immediately summoned by a beer soaked regular to take his picture in not so many words. I declined....of course. Don't have enough film I yelled. Thinking that numeric photography was at that moment, light years away from his alcohol reduced brain.



If you take a walk around away from hustle and bustle of the city core onto the side streets, you'll find amazing little old style wooden houses on hill sides, ripe with flowery gardens, huge trees and birds galore.



We even have our own Crescent street (see pic).But you won't be seeing any Porsche bunnies or cigar smoking sugar daddies ogling the huge breasted, stiletto heeled thrill seeker.



Morin Heights is very quiet and sleepy. It's also the perfect outdoor recreational small town year round. It has a community feeling to it that beckons the heart and soul and frees the mind. I often laugh at it's shortcomings having lived in a metropolis for a long time. On rare occasions, I do miss the adrenaline filled rush of a teaming big city with bright lights and endless nights. The anonymity of the faceless crowd and the abundance of man made temptations. But truthfully, I'm glad we landed here and wouldn't live anywhere else on this planet... for now.

Bad bag

Boy it's a great day today. Not too warm here in the mountains but with an abundance of sunshine and a pleasing lack of bugs of the blood sucking kind.
This week was again more relaxed partly due to our glorious Fête Nationale which fell on the 24th and is a mandatory holiday here in Quebec.

I don't go to the supermarket that often. My wife handles the grocery shopping mainly because we've decided that it's not my domain. I can find my way around a hardware store but supermarkets are boring to me. I couldn't care less about a yogurt going on sale but it somehow excites my wife. Recently, the mega supermarket chains have started a trend that really pisses me off. They've decided to not give anymore plastic bags to their customers at the check out counter to apparently save the environment. Actually, if you want one to put your groceries in, they'll sell you one for five cents. More idiotic corporate PR bullshit... Throwing the ball in the consumer's yard to make him feel like he's actively doing his part to rid the world of this terrible bane we call the plastic bag. This makes as much an impact on the environment than a pimple would on Oprah's ass. ( By the way Tim Wilson has an excellent song about overexposed celebrities at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-5d5IfdYK4).

Meanwhile in these oversized markets, everything is either wrapped in plastic, or comes in plastic and by the facial expression I get from the store employees, I suspect their faces are also made of plastic. You have boxes with plastic inside, boxes with plastic outside, eggs now come in plastic, cheese is often wrapped in plastic (some of it might even be plastic) and the vast majority of containers for water, juices, spices, you name it, are now plastic made. Am I missing anything here..? It goes as far as putting plastic in plastic. Garbage bags come in a plastic bag. It would make more sense to me if they used one of the bags to package the others.I made good use of those grocery bags, mainly disposing of my doggies poop in a responsible manner. And why couldn't they have adopted degradable plastic bags..? They are abundant nowadays but I suspect that they cost just a little more to produce. This trend as also contaminated our government run liquor board, the S.A.Q. and it's outlets. They used to put your purchases, wine, beer or spirits in paper or plastic bags. But they don't do that anymore. They want you to buy a nifty designer like reusable bag, which they sell on the premises, so you think you're saving a tree, a tire or something. More fuckin' hypocrisy bullshit from a corporate minded government. Why...? Well because they don't have a bottle consignment policy for any of their products including beer. You're expected to clean them out and put them in your little recycling blue bin so that the glass will maybe find it's way to a mash up facility and then be resold to you in another fashion or product along the way. Recycling glass is much more energy consuming and wasteful than a proper
consignment policy.

I'm not against recycling but I am against the propagandist illusion maintained by our governments and big corporations that we are individually saving the planet by tossing a few bottles and some plastic containers in a separate containment unit each week. It takes much more than that I'm afraid. Michael Moore whom I equate to a social shock jock, wrote a great piece on the subject on his blog at
http://greenyes.grrn.org/2003/04/msg00052.html if you care to read it.

So the next time you bring your conscience saving reusable bag to go grocery shopping,take a good look at all the wasteful plastic wrappings and containers. If you're doing your part, why shouldn't they..?

Footnote: The green you see in the picture is not of rolling hills of grass. I stumbled upon this site of broken glass by chance one day in an industrial part of town. The white paper mixed in seems like labels which is odd. I couldn't find out anything there because I was immediately escorted to the entrance by an angry foreman who didn't appreciate the fact that I was taking pictures of this top secret installation.

Have some mesc..!

Thank God for an uneventful week after the porcupine incident. We've started to go walking in the woods with the dogs again now that the prickly little beasts have departed to higher grounds.During the week I often peruse the net for news and other tidbits of interest. I came upon this headline by accident while going about my daily routine.
People not smart enough to understand universe: scientist.
This comes from an interview with Lord Martin Rees the president of the Royal Society of Astronomy in England. Surely anyone who's ever seen a live parliamentary debate or the Doctor Phil Show will agree without question. Lord Rees states that the idea of multiple parallel universes, human consciousness and the very idea of reality may be simply beyond our understanding.'' Just as a fish may be barely aware of he medium in which it lives and swims, so the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human brains." The idea of parallel universes or dimensions is not new. If you've ever heard of the string theory it's worth looking into. I won't dwell on this but you can get a brief intro on it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtdE662eY_M
This immediately made me think of Aldous Huxley who wrote '' Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large''. This is most probably identical to the One Mind philosophy in Zen Buddhism. He concludes ''But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this Particular planet''.He also believed that this so called reduction valve could be dilated by the use of drugs, especially mescaline the main active ingredient in peyote. Aboriginal peoples in south america have been using the drug in rituals for thousands of years to alter their state of consciousness and get closer to the gods which could be interpreted as transcending their unilateral dimension. We have somehow forgotten how these so called primitives had a much better understanding of the universe and it's fragile equilibrium. Even when we send our high tech toys to explore the space frontier, in effect, we're still playing in our own backyard. Some people resort to meditation or yoga with the same objective in mind, supraconsciousness . Others have used drugs to accelerate the process of understanding the universe and our place in the whole scheme of things. Unsatisfied with the unilateral vision of the world they lived in, Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna, Hunter S.Thompson, Beaudelaire and a horde of other creative individuals embarked on psychedelic journeys to ascend to a different plane of thought and consciousness. I don't advocate the use of drugs for kids, since they are most often used as a means of recreation and escape and getting totally fucked up during spring break. But I think our world leaders would do well to have a mescaline party when they meet . They would quickly realize the mess they continue to unilaterally perpetuate and hopefully they would immerse themselves in a larger vision of what could be a better world for future generations. Plus, it would make for funnier and more interesting G8 summits.Of course they would have to be under strict surveillance just in case Angela Merkel decided to run naked through the gardens singing I am the walrus since the whole drug fueled get together would be televised. Great entertainment and maybe for once, some genuine and original ideas would take shape.

Gee..! 20

Wow...! My first real 2 day weekend since Easter. Although work is not as hectic as it was, nevertheless this past week hasn't been a walk in the park. I'm still recuperating from this flue like bug and the doggies had an unlikely encounter with porcupines in the woods. Both needed to go to the vet for a careful extraction of the quills left behind by the frightened mammals. I wish I had a photo of the four legged pin cushions but I was at work when it happened.
The big news this week is that the G 20 World Tour Extravaganza is coming to the fair city of Toronto in a couple of weeks. Our glorious leader Stephen Harper and his acolytes have spared no expense it seems to impress this elite club of number crunching over sized wallet managers who will be the opening act for the G8 summit in Huntsville. Not unlike the little brother who invites his elder siblings to a backyard barbecue to show how good he's doing.
Of course security runs high on the agenda ever since the Seattle summit. An estimated 933 million that could easily surpass 1 billion. As Mr. Rogers would put it...'' Can you spell r-e-c-e-s-s-i-o-n '' Mr.Harper. This elite club of global monetary policy makers will again decide what's good for the rest of the countries of the world underhandedly favoring big corporation interests over the good of the people they are claiming to represent.
In light of this, I came up with a few recommendations of my own that would no doubt help their tarnished image in these troubled economic times.

1- Fly economy. Instead of whizzing here on a private jet, save a few bucks. There are some great deals from major airlines available from any local travel agent. Get a window or aisle seat though. You wouldn't want to sitbetween an obese tourist and a mother with a teething 18 month old baby.

2- Lodging can be a problem. Those five star suites can be a burden on the old pocket book. I know the Y in Toronto is close and offers clean linen. Or if you prefer cozier accommodations, there's no shortage of Bed and Breakfasts with private bathrooms and as the name implies, a hearty breakfast is included.

3- Limos are nice but you'll get bogged down in traffic. Use public transportation. It will get you to the convention center in no time and you'll be able to rub shoulders, backsides, elbows and other parts of your body with the little people.

4- Forget the caviar and wine that hasn't seen the light of day since 1787. A ham and cheese sandwich washed down with a light beer will do the job. Or, if you're more vegetarian minded, a nice Greek salad with mineral water will get you through the day.But watch out for black olives with pits.

5- Buy lots of souvenirs. It would only be fitting that after spending this much money to host this glorified boys club that you would put back a little into our regional economy. We have an interesting assortment of Canadian items such as original Inuit carvings made in China and paraphernalia adorned with images of the famed Royal Canadian Mounted Police, courtesy of Disney.

6- Scrap the whole summit. Use Skype and video-conference from the comfort of your palace like ivory towers. I'm sure there's no shortage of worthy causes that would benefit from such a cash flow from the moneys saved. Just give it to us instead of managing it yourselves. After all, you're responsible for this economic mess in the first place...aren't you.

Footnote: The picture I chose comes from the work of Dorothea Lange. Lange and other photographers were hired by the Farm Security Administration (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html) to document the plight of farmers and the harshness of rural living conditions during the Great Depression. Let's just hope that with globalization and the ever increasing number of independent farmers going bankrupt, history does not repeat itself.