Mosquito in Profile

Late last night I felt a mosquito alight upon my exposed hand - the only portion of skin not hidden beneath quilt or pillow - and work his muzzle deep down into the dermis for a warm draft. And I'm fine with that. Hey, that's what I'm here for! I'm really just a walking, talking, 44oz, blood-flavored Big Gulp, and I accept that fate. I'm not going to spend my whole life begrudging an entire genus of plasma seekers their daily bread, but for the instant of mildest discomfort necessarily associated with the work. Just keep off the face, alright?

As I say, I could feel the rustle and occasional pinch of a mosquito making hay atop my right hand as I lay waiting for sleep. But as time wore on the sensation of being bit, usually a solitary event followed by acute stillness, repeated and increased in frequency. Eventually I lifted my head from the pillow and turned to address my hapless nurse who couldn't find the vein, readying a stern lecture on the evils of taking advantage of others' kindnesses. But what do I find here? Two mosquitos! Side by side, working their little noses into the fleshy buffet of my skin in unison; bearing all the aspect of a two-man team alternately humping away at a hand-pumped railroad car.

Two o'clock in the morning, or no: this was worth a photograph. Carefully I drew back the quilt and sheets and carefully I lifted my hand from the surface of the bed. And to my drinkers' merits they did not stir as I negotiated my camera.

But shooting photos in the dark - and one-handed nonetheless - takes some dialing-in; in the process of which one of my small companions filled his belly to the brim with blood and flitted off in gourmand satisfaction, leaving me but one prima donna to preen in the impromptu shoot.



See the blood reddening his belly? That's me!

Vanity

I'm going to sell prints of this.

Midnight Bloom

I love the darkness and the blueish palette here.



Trippy man.

I simply crushed the levels together in GIMP for this last one. Thought it might make a nifty desktop background for somebody. Not me, of course. God no! But you, maybe.

February Bloom

ISO: 100, Exposure: 1/10 sec, Aperture: 4.0

Photo Montage

A motel we did not stay at on the way to Florida, whose signage met the perfect shade of dusk.


Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, as testifies my skullcap, purchased thereat.


Where can that fish be? It is a most elusive fish. And it went wherever I did go. Oh fishy, fishy, fishy fish. A fish, a fish, a fish, a fishy-o. Oh fishy, fishy, fishy fish, that went wherever I did go.


Father and sister, under the sea, in an octopus' garden, in the shade.


The look on sister Emily's face is so purely human; so between breaths; between trying and not; between caring and not. This is the face of Maya the earth mother, whose joy is as much in creation as it is in destruction. Who smiles and gives birth; who smiles and strangles her newborn child to death. This is the face of nothing and everything. And the fish are pretty too.


And then Grandma and I hung the Christmas lights.


Buster, angered by the existence of anything larger than a bowl-sized body of water, fought a battle with the pool, and to my surprise smelled little like a wet dog should.


Victor's Thanksgiving table setting, pre-carnage.


Carnage.


Back in Michigan the cat gets a Christmas gift; proceeds to swat at the mouse on the stick for three consecutive hours, falls asleep next to it, wakes up and renews pursuit.


Christmas day at cousin Jeremy's. Three extended branches of the family tree pile gifts beneath the pine and try to tolerate each others' existence for a few hours. They meet with an unlikely success!


Be the ball.


I order a cheap electronic drum kit. It comes broken. I tell customer support where they can stick it. They overnight me a new one.


The new one.



An early morning flower blooms one day as I'm preparing for work.


This very morning all my suspicions are at last validated. I am being stalked by some hairy-palmed, peeping-tom of a rabbit!

...Even 'Rocky' had a montage.

Fly on Napkin

Alternately titled: Kindness and Death.





Not to ruin the illusion but this guy was still alive, last I saw of him. He was either injured or ghastly cold when I got hold of him; not moving too quick, nor at all venturing to take up his namesake and fly. He kept tripping on things and rolling onto his back. I'd offer him the edge of the napkin to grab onto, whereupon he would right himself, crawl onto the napkin, and immediately turn his back to the camera -- the thankless little fuck.

Flora

This Christmas is not faring well, so says the lining of my stomach; so says the tossing, wearied, sleepless nights. The money goes out and does not come in. My recent Florida vacation adventures cost me half a month's pay and resulted in little of the vacation-y goodness I'd hoped. Now comes Christmas to add insult to financial injury.

Last Christmas went so well, I recall. I had such good gift ideas, and felt so fiscally unhindered at the time. I stumbled onto coupons and was able to give more than I'd hoped. It all came off so gloriously.

This year it's all a flop. I haven't but the one good gift idea, and it's for my father, who - as always - is calling off Christmas this year. He'll get his nonetheless.

I've found a series of heartless, dispassionate gifts to fill the place of the good ones I lack and my Christmas is now typified by anxiety and discontent. I've had one good gift brainstorm and found that even this rare, good idea is out to get me. It's a damned expensive gift to give and if I give it I can't bring myself to give much more. This necessarily places a great weight and importance on the gift and if it is not up to snuff I might just as well count all my giving-efforts worthless. There is further, a dread possibility that this gift would need returning, and the only place I can find to buy it is Amazon.com, and it's heavy as all hell, so the cost of shipping it back adds one more barb to the wire flossing at my ear canals lately.

Winter itself is an expense. I'm forced to drive everywhere now, so come the cost of gas. And winter entertainment is a bit more expensive than the other kind. The outdoors turn inhospitable and barren leaving men to amuse themselves indoors where the luxury of walls and heat take on a premium. I'll soon have need of coats and boots and such that I have somehow failed to retain from winters passed. All must be bought. Each has its cost.

And all this want of money has brought me to the sharp, deep precipice that is my current income. I once made twice what I make now, doing the same work, at the same location, putting in the same hours. But I came and left and came and left, and upon my last return times were bad and my services could nolonger be afforded at the going rate. Spiteful of money, never much of a capitalist anyway, I was happy to accept a pay cut while our business waned. And there I have remained.

But times aren't bad now. Times haven't been bad for a while, in fact. Oh, maybe for others; maybe for the economy in general. But as far as I can see our little shop has been pounding away with just as much business as we've ever had, and for quite some time now. Meanwhile my pay has not raised; my income has not returned. And though my worth is often noted and my labors very well appreciated, this appreciation has not extended itself monetarily, but only at the lip. My labor is billed at $80 per hour and yet I see naught but pittance of that, even as business booms. Five years exemplary service to the same employer: and my reward is poverty-level income. If I worked for a corporation this kind of thing would be expected, but I work for a friend, so it's an insult.

All this and more has been weighing on my mind and resting like a rock in my stomach. The gifts and deadlines of the season, paired with my regular obligations, tied to the one-time loss of a misfit vacation, bound to the rising costs of the season, matched with my unrewarded labor in the form of a flat income... And this not to mention the physiological effects of sunless, gray skies, lack of exercise, and a persistent chill that haunts me indoors and out. Well, I'm depressed, anxiety stricken, and my mind is taking every chance it has to redouble the weight of my woes. Even my dreams are starting to attack me.

So I've decided that it isn't a coincidence, but a meaningful, and charitable act performed in the greatest, and most magnanimous spirit of sympathy, that the potted tree on the other side of the room - that sits outdoors all spring and summer, basking in the warmth and sunlight, but never flowering, has decided -- yes, chosen this very day and moment to cast open a single flower as wide and as beautiful as any, for my soft consideration and health of mind. It is its gift to me. That only I had one as good to give to it or any.

Ant vs. Spider - Spider Wins

I was heading outside to film my golf swing when I noticed a congregation of crawlies on the screen door. A trio of ants - one grounded, two with wings - and a deuce of spiders that included our old friend Spider-Hunter! He's gotten even bigger, by the way.


You can see his Armpit Hair!
I didn't get any passable shots of Spider-Hunter this time, but made great labors trying to take just one good shot of his counterpart, what had caught itself one of those flying ants I mentioned and held it in a death-grip. Despite three or four dozen snaps I just didn't have the combination of light and angle I needed to get a decent shot. This one will have to do:


That's just Creepy.
Next time: My golf swing at 60fps.

Spider-Hunter

...By which I mean a spider whom is also a hunter or is otherwise occupied or employed in the business of hunting; note the hyphen. This, rather than indicating those learnedly professed in the art of hunting spiders. What?


In the blind.
This fella' had spun a web flat against the outside of my sliding glass door, affording me the perfect opportunity to get these closeups. I ended up taking in the monopod's legs and simply leaning the camera directly against the glass. So there is literally an inch of seperation between lens and subject here. That's why you can see his little wee-wee so well. Tee-hee.


On the mend.
Twice, while shooting, a bug tried to fly through the glass door, brushing against Spider-Hunter's web in the process. Both times I was in the middle of taking a batch of bracketed shots when suddenly Spider-Hunter disappeared out of the frame. And boy, could he move.

He didn't catch anything while I was shooting - damned shame, that - but it was surely not for lack of trying. It took him less than one second to move to the exact point on his web that had been grazed by the passing bug, which is an even more amazing feat when you realize they aren't really using their eyes to dial into where they're headed. At least I don't think so... Eh, what do I know. I'm just the picture-takerer-guy.


Our boys in Europe send Adolph home to Mutter!
"Why spiders," you ask? Because they're there. Literally. It's spider season and I'm hemmed in by them on all sides. I might as well take a few snaps, you know? It's the least they can do to strike me a pose in repayment for biting the ass out of me in my sleep, don't you think?

Spider Mom

A month or two ago I bought a digital camera; a slightly out-of-date model: A Canon PowerShot A570 IS. I chose the model much because of its compatibility with CHDK, a firmware package that adds extra functionality to the PowerShot line of cameras. When the camera arrived I installed CHDK, drained the batteries thumbing through the thousand different options it contained, then set the thing in a corner to gather dust.

That's not entirely true, of course. You've seen some of the holiday snaps I've taken with it, and my last two YouTube videos were recorded thereupon as well. (Yeah, it records 60fps video too.) Point is, though, that all them there nifty after-market functions added by the CHDK pack, which had much guided my purchase of the A570, were going mainly unused.

Well make way America, as I enter the overpopulated world of amateur photography! Or in other words, check this shit out:



A Spider
Meet Spider Mom. Spider Mom was hanging from a ceiling tile in my basement. When I noticed her I grabbed the camera and the monopod and started shooting. Over the course of probably forty-five minutes I took over one hundred images of her, keeping the best twenty or so.


The Same Spider.
In the end I was able to close to within an inch of Spider Mom to get these shots. I am not using any zoom here. You should have seen me on my knees moving slowly, breathing shallowly, trying not to stir the air, because each time the air stirred the thread Spider Mom hung from would sway imperceptibly in space, blurring these low shutter speed, small aperture shots.


What's the black dot on her head?
The images above have been cropped - but not scaled - and rotated ninety degrees clockwise, all in the hopes that they will better fit your monitor. Please click on the images to view the full sized versions, and when viewing the larger image, make sure that your browser isn't scaling it down to fit the window. These images ought rightly to be viewed at their full pixel count.

---
"Amazing, Roy. Simply amazing! That you can take such startlingly detailed photographs with a consumer-grade camera... You truly are a wonder of God's own creation. If it pleases your magnificence, may we be allowed, sire, to fellate you?"

No, no... Well, later. As for now I'm sure you're asking yourself why I've named my subject Spider Mom. How have I divined her to be a mother? For that matter, what makes her a her? Verily I say unto you, "check this other shit out."





Awwwwww. Er, Ewwwwww.
Yes, that's a piece of lint stuck in her webbing... You'd have to ask her how it got there.

Unfortunately, Spider Mom was indeed harmed in the making of this film. For in my over zealousness to get more shots containing both her and her offspring I accidentally touched the camera to the line from which she and her baby hung. The line became glued to the camera, and as I gently tried to pull the camera away; as Spider Mom flailed about and crawled down the line toward the camera; in the midst of all this delicately controlled chaos I felt something crawling on my hand.

Mindlessly I brushed it away and returned to the task of prying Spider Mom's line from the camera's housing. When I had accomplished this I found Spider Mom right where I wanted her, still hanging in mid-air much as she had been before. But, oh no! Spider Baby was nowhere to be found.

Thus, when I say that Spider Mom was harmed in the making of this film, it is that worse hurt I speak of; more painful than any mere squishing beneath a shoe. For it is the pain of life continued in the untimely absence of a child. Whether Spider Baby still exists is unknown to me as I believe it is to Spider Mom as well.

Mourn we all for Spider Mom, whose child goes she knows not where. Amen.