The onfocus empire is expanding its operation. Well, it's also slowing down in some places. We never close a site without opening a window. But it looks like someone in the organization is muscling in on my territory. Time to double check the onfocus by-laws... ;) (nice photos!)
Posts from June 2001
Santa Cruz Sentinel: "In the circle, Kim poured Jay's ashes, and the surfers let out a yell." The picture of the memorial event is amazing, even at its small size with this article.
by chance
This was his last step before the accident
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Thanks everyone for contributing captions. As I write this post there are 14. That's more than I expected. I realize now by having the captions in a public space, it's sort of a gallery of its own. A gallery of captions with no photos. I like that idea too.
I haven't looked at them yet. I wonder if a theme has developed. I think I'll take some of the pictures today. Where should I go?
A little help? I'd like to create a photo gallery based on chance. A gallery with captions and pictures. And I want to take the pictures but I don't want to make up the captions. That's where you come in. Click 'comment' below and leave a caption. I'll take several photos and pair up the captions with the pictures in the order they were taken. And I'll try not to look at the captions beforehand. This way there is a picture, a caption, and some third thing that is a combination of the two. How can you write a caption for a picture you've never seen? I'm not sure, but thanks for trying! Will the results be remotely interesting? That's chance.
Sexy Beast is the best British crime suspense drama I've seen since The Croupier. Ok, it's the only British crime suspence drama I've seen since then...but it's very good. Ben Kingsley is incredibly scary. I've seen it described as a dark comedy, and there were laughs through about the first half. But they slowly tapered off as the film got more and more intense. It has some of the best acting I've seen in a while. Thumbs up.
I wish I could be outside on this gorgeous day instead of sitting inside nursing a sprained ankle. Oh well, I can live vicariously through the web: I found this great mostly Bay Area hiking site. And it has several hikes I've been on. It's always good to compare notes.
wacky. Some guy spent $11,000 to make his apartment look like the set of Star Trek. What a ripoff! I only spent a fraction of that turning my house into the set of One Day at a Time. Finding a Dwayne Schneider cardboard cutout, however, was quite a feat.
I submitted two pictures (1,2) from my Nebraska trip to the swanky new Mirror Project. (Heather does great work.) Thanks to the new search feature, you can see some of the other reflective pictures I've taken by searching for 'pb'.
"Forget about it, Sanchez. The old man likes his cannolis."
This picture of a floor mural detail from 1934 looks similar to this picture I took last week. The shoes have changed but the murals haven't.
I read Nobrow by John Seabrook on my way back. The part of the book that stuck with me was his explorations of the way taste was used to preserve social classes after conspicuous economic displays became taboo. He tells a story from his college years where a fellow student says, "How dare you talk about taste when there are people in the world who don't have enough to eat." But it seems the lesson didn't sink in. Part of the book reads like elitist consumer brand-fetish porn, part like a love letter to Tina Brown, and much like a cry for help. I will say that it's peppered with insights that only a privileged brand junky can have...for whatever that's worth. I felt unclean after reading it, and probably wouldn't have finished it if I wasn't trapped with it on a train for two days. A good alternative to Nobrow is Coercion by Douglas Rushkoff.
I was due for another cat picture:
That's my cousin Taylor's hand and my aunt Julie in the background. This is one of their new kitties.
I took the train home. It was nice, but felt a little longer than the way out because I just wanted to be home. I read, listened, and watched. (I didn't take as many pictures this time, though.) I was completely disconnected for 48 hours.
My trip to the good life went well, but it's always nice to get home. The golden state is pretty much the same as I left it: rolling hills and rolling blackouts.
I spent the day with my folks wandering around Lincoln. We stopped by the capitol building, the state historical society museum, and the sheldon art gallery on the UNL campus. There are snapshots!
Speaking of military aircraft...
Mobile phones may foil stealth bombers: "It's remarkable that a stealth system that cost
U2 spy plane
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Today I went to the Strategic Air Command Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. I took a few pictures naturally. It's amazing that some of those huge planes could fly.
Craig already posted quite a few pictures of his new puppy Madison on his site, but I figure one more can't hurt.
She's going to be a big dog.
People wave at trains. No matter where the train was, if someone was in site they waved. The exception was Reno, Nevada, as the train passed casinos and hotels through downtown. And some rafters on the Colorado River dropped thier pants and showed their best side. Drivers in their cars at train crossings usually scowled. But people outside, railside workers, horse riders, lawn sitters, bike riders, roustabouts, baseball fans at the new Colorado Rockies park, hikers, readers; all waving.
When I was a kid I used to wave at planes when they passed overhead.
too. many. jokes. can't pick one. hehe. (be sure to check out all of the customer reviews. I especially like Succinctity is the sole of brevitousness.)
reflecting in a tunnel
riding the rails
Train routes have names. I took the California Zephyr, one of the longest routes. It has an interesting history, and one of the books I read on the train was Zephyr: Tracking a Dream Across America by Henry Kisor. It is an amazingly relaxing way to travel.
Most of the pictures I took were out the window. Many of them have reflections and scratches and other window badness going on. I took my digital, so I didn't have a polarizing filter to help out with that. boo.
I sometimes forget that America is a big, big country. Across this vast expanse of geography are fences. I'm not sure who maintains these fences; but they are maintained. And maintained in the most remote and rugged landscapes you can imagine. There must be enough barbed wire to circle the earth. twice. The American West is a triumph of fencing.
I'll be traveling for a while, so I put together this collection of traveling music:
- Tom Waits, Mule Variations
- Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of Bewilderbeast
- Leonard Cohen, Best of
- Nick Drake, Way to Blue
- Kruder & Dorfmeister, DJ-Kicks
- Joni Mitchell, Blue
- Ani Difranco, Revelling: Reckoning
things are finally starting to get back to normal at this site after being jostled about. The quotes section still needs a little work, and there are some broken images in my weblog archive...otherwise it's back to normal around here. I owe a big thanks to Nate at Luminee for helping out with some emergency server space. Thanks!