photos for monday

No one smiles for my camera. So I've decided to work with it. Enjoy!

Deb is Engaged




Lacey is Alone




Aaron is Mulling




Curtis is Not Really Inside The Glass




Curtis and Gina Are at a Brief Impasse




Jules Is Not Sure





Water and Ice




Additional Water and Ice

friendly weekend

I will not be insulting the elements this weekend. Here is my stapler.



Wait, there has been an error. Hold on.



The stapler was a gift from Schmutzie. The rest of the office envies me my stapler.

No one envies the dead dry weed on the street. It is pitied by all.

Ass Bike

important update: halloween was last night

Every year I find myself in the same situation, which is to say, the one in which I've thought of a bunch of great costume ideas in July, neglected to write any of them down, and found myself completely uncostumed at the end of October. Despite the build-up of candy in the stores, the online articles about scary movies, the steady creep of black-and-orange horror show paraphernalia, Halloween surprises me with its suddenness every year. It's as if I fall asleep on October 30th and wake in the midst of a queasy alternate universe where everyone is obliged to dress in archetypes. It's like the subconscious has risen and devoured consciousness, and for some reason my brain has been tasted and left on the plate with the napkins.

We don't do any preparations for Halloween at our apartment, which may have something to do with it. Schmutzie and I are not seasonal decorators (thus the fact that we have never had a Christmas tree, making do instead with an iron sculpture wrapped in fake foliage, LED lights and topped with a cowboy hat), and no children come to our door for candy, so we never buy any.

But it's great fun to go out for a drink after work and witness the ingenuity and/or desperation on display. By far the most common costume of choice was pirate. I found it interesting that both men and women dressed in pirate gear, which makes Kiera Knightley an unlikely pathbreaker. Even among the unpirated a kind of eighteenth century aesthetic prevailed, with piled-up wigs, frilly shirts and billowy dresses everywhere. A couple of my friends had taken aim at 1930s and 40s era sex symbols, with great success. A couple of Hunter S. Thompsons roamed the crowd, one with a Dr. Gonzo attendant. My friend Steve showed up as J. Michael Hall's Dexter, with the green river driver shirt, latex gloves and expensive looking blood splatter on his face. A Silent Bob and Jay kept walking in and out of the bar, astonishingly recognizable. There were no Sarah Palins or any other politicians, which shows how immune we Canadians can be to the political agonies across the border.

Most of the women fit into the 'slutty n' category of dress-up (slutty pirate, slutty construction worker, slutty vampire, slutty fairy, slutty devil, slutty accountant, slutty comptroller, you name it), but what amazed me were the astonishing number of wings on women's backs. Fairy wings, bee wings, angel and devil wings, miscellaneous wings: everything except deep-fried chicken wings, I would guess. Wings were the psychoplasmatic feminine expression of the night. Aside from that it was all tits and teeth and cheap greasepaint.

I had no costume, but at some point I drank enough to put on a Viking helmet.



My friend Shanan took a picture of us together, but I had clearly hit the point of no return, and most of my energy was spent trying to hold my face together. Fortunately Shanan (the poreless face on the left) had enough smile for both of us. She also had the presence of mind to actually look at the camera.



And here's one more, also taken by Shanan, also of me, because, even though I had the least elaborate costume there (somebody else's hat), I think I look surprisingly good with Viking horns. I call this photo "Towards the Viking future".

how to get out

And now you know.

cthulhu waits no more

Hey check this out. Last week we bought a bag of onions from the grocery store. It turns out that at least one of those onions is the Elder God Cthulhu, who has woken from His eldritch sleep of death and journeyed from the underwater stone city R'lyeh. I guess the stars must be right for His awakening.



You can use His tentacles in sauces and stir fries, or simply chop finely into your salad as a garnish!



D'you know, I think He's reaching to turn off the kitchen light. His Will is to Become One with The Darkness.





I think He noticed me when I took His unholy image here.

I'm a printin' photos

I printed a small selection of my photos. These ones ended up looking, to my crazed eye, absolutely smashing. I'm thinking they'd make nice prizes. If only I had a contest. Do I have an outstanding contest going?

You've seen these photos before. But you like them.


The Kindness of Oxycontin




Pint of Keiths




End of Days




Fingah Meats




Snarf




Victory in Feldkirch




You're Too Close To My Apple




High Heels



UPDATE: Nate of Okay City is the first winner! That didn't take long at all. He has named the contest "Dibs". For his sins he receives a print of "End of Days".

the authorial stance

My friend Danny took this last weekend. I'm looking thoughtful, clean-shaven and downright authorial. And horribly drunk.

headache, despair or prelude to display of awesome telekinetic powers

Have I shown you this before? September 2004 in Karlsruhe. I bought a secondhand Pentax in a nearby store and walked out shooting pictures.

Now that I think about it, Bryan Adams was on tour through Germany and Austria at that point. She may have been sensing a massive disturbance in The Taste.

two cats

One of them sits still and poses for the camera. The other is so fidgety that this is the sharpest, stillest shot I could manage. However you please.

a lesson from my cat

You think that Onion, my cat, is harmless. Here in this photo he is beguiling you.



Pow! Onion has delivered a powerful right jab. You have been schooled by my cat.



Now you'll think twice before letting the cat beguile you.

mysterious gills

If you are not screaming with terror right now, then I have failed.

I can see the End Times from my office window

How convenient is it that I already have a label called "the end of all things"?









It's not a corner office, but it's within spitting distance of the apocalypse.

i has a camra?

Yahoo! I got me a swanky, nearly pill-sized* little digital camera. They call it a Lumix FZ-8. I call it Daniel the Camera. Why Daniel? Because many years ago, when I was an orphaned boy wandering around the ruins of Eastern Europe, a man named Daniel locked me in a shed and forgot about me. I nearly starved to death. Daniel looked a lot like my camera. Here is the only surviving photo of that half-human, half-animal jailer who nearly destroyed me.



And here are a few images I took of stuff 'round the house.


Here are two otherwise civilized cats exploding into arcs and blobs.


And then some more.


These are wind chimes that Schmutzie's parents brought us from the Dominican a few years back.



It behooves you not to forget the Crab House Crunch.

Anyway, every time I look at my camera, I think of Daniel, and my heart grows a little colder. It's good to have a camera.

*Obviously I'm talking about a sizable pill.