My Quiet Life

Updates:

Been a busy summer, and it flew by too quickly. Project365 is grinding to a close — only 9 weeks to go! In need of some serious downtime sooner than later.

Just a friendly reminder that Christmas is coming. I’m just sayin’.

Remember when I used to write on this thing?

I’ve been very busy, though not with anything exciting. I am having some sort of third-life crisis, with regards to wanting to travel more. I spent some time in Wilmington last month and vastly enjoyed being on a beach and eating at restaurants and taking pictures all day. I’ve been giving it some thought, and I’ve decided to become ridiculously wealthy so I can do this full-time. I think it’s the right step for me at this point.

I spent all Saturday working on my car. I generally enjoy working on a car, as it’s meditative and peaceful, particularly on a day as nice as Saturday. In fact, if it hadn’t been so nice, I probably would have had a temper tantrum, because the car repairs didn’t go so well. It was a simple alternator replacement, and everything was going peachy until it came time to adjust the tension on the alternator belt. A few adjustments and I couldn’t get it quite right, and the belt was still spinning freely. So, on the last go-round, I get it just right, and go to tighten the tensioner bolt, and as I tighten it, I feel that tell-tale sickening crack as the wrench breaks loose and my hand flies headline into all kinds of sharp things in the engine bay. I was hoping, nay praying I had simply stripped the bolt, but no. The damn bolt shredded the threads on the alternator mounting bracket like it was made out of fucking tinfoil. So, the thing is basically useless to me now. I am going to try to return it, because I honestly didn’t tighten it that hard. This bolt cut through it like it was butter. Not sure what they’re making alternators out of these days — recycled solder? Maybe it was a defective batch of metal, I don’t know.

But, it was hard to get too upset with the sun shining like it was on Saturday. C’est la vie! I did another photoshoot on Sunday. Lesson learned: I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Other lesson learned: don’t do portrait photography outside at high noon. These photography tipz and more, courtesy of yours truly.

A rainy morning is bad enough as it is. It’s 7AM, dark and gloomy. You don’t want to leave the warmth of your bed. Now, imagine you’ve had pile drivers and dynamite drilling as an alarm clock for the past 2 months, and suddenly, due to the rain, they all just stop, and all you can hear is the sound of the rain on the windows.

Getting out of bed this morning was a truly herculean endeavor.

I have been listening to Richard Hawley’s first album, Late Night Final, compulsively. I can’t stop, I’m like a madman. It’s rare that I have an album I instantly like, but this is one. Usually when I instantly like an album I eventually hate it — and vice versa. My favorite albums are usually the ones I’m ambivalent about to start with. But, so far so good, here. This isn’t from Late Night Final, but it’s a beautiful song nonetheless. Cute video and a hot girl, to boot:

Not half! This happens to me all the time when I wander around aimlessly downtown.

Photonerdery, feel free to ignore: Are there any photographers out there who have a 77mm ND filter I could borrow? I’m interested in playing with some longer daytime exposures with my 10-22, but I don’t want to plunk down the (substantial) money for one just yet..

Just got back from seeing Ron Paul speak at the War Memorial Auditorium. First, can anyone spot the irony there? So I can divide my thoughts about Ron Paul into two categories: my political prognosis, and my personal take on his stances.

First, the political prognosis: not good. If I were his political career’s doctor I’d be advising him to get right with God. The guy reminds me of Dennis Kucinich — admirably likeable and imminently unelectable. Why? I’m just gonna lay this out there: you don’t talk about abolishing the federal reserve if you want to get elected president. You just don’t, sorry. Doing so puts you in the firing sights of some truly staggering powers from every end of the spectrum — from ignorance to eminence. They will destroy him. It is a little bizarre, however, to sit in a full auditorium of people standing up and cheering madly at the dismantling of the federal reserve. Maybe this makes me an elitist, but I had a hard time believing that most of the people I saw cheering had any clear conception of what the federal reserve even does, but hey. That said, I will gladly eat my words if he wins the presidential election, or even the primary.

Now as far as his stances. For consistency, he generally gets an A+ — this is what most people like about him. Liberty, liberty, liberty. He’s anti-tax, anti-war, anti-government intervention in almost every respect. Almost. Immigration is where he and I part ways — one of his big talking points is that we need to “secure our borders”. Immigration is one of those things where I am continually perplexed by libertarians. I’ve made the criticism of conservatives in the past with regard to, say, wealth redistribution and economic equality, that it seems their belief in economic freedom has a rather arbitrary starting point. “We’re all on equal economic footing riiiiiiight now. Yep, right now. What’s that you say, minority that we’ve been oppressing and exploiting for several centuries? No.. no, we can’t help you. We’re on equal footing now!” And so it seems with immigration and libertarians. “We believe in liberty as the great equalizer, and it should be extended to every facet of life … but it stops at this border riiiiight here. This line represents the bounds of our liberty. Yep, sorry. You have to be born here to get that liberty. Sorry, generations of natives that we shuffled off and exterminated to form this border. You’re too late!”

It seems to me that the position on immigration most consistent with a truly libertarian outlook would be the advocacy of open borders. How can you rant endlessly about the power of the liberty, free exchange of money, goods, and ideas, and then suddenly decide that people need to be corraled according to borders forged over the centuries of imperialism that libertarianism is supposed to be opposing? It strikes me as hypocritical, and a rather shameful concession to pervasive xenophobia.

Lastly, there’s the RonPaul-ites. The legions of .. shall we say .. devoted fans. They have quite the reputation already, and it appears to be mostly justified. I sat sandwiched between a guy in a revolutionary war costume with a giant flag and a lady that kept yelling “YAYYYY!!!!” like she was at a Predators’ game. It was a little surreal.

Alice Smith is re-releasing a re-mastered version of her album, For Lovers, Dreamers and Me on October 30th — I know this because we are really good friends .. er, MySpace friends. Uh, anyways. You can pre-order it on her website. You should, because it was the best album of 2006. It’ll probably be the best album of 2007, too.