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After a LONG (and perhaps very much needed) Break from Politics, I have decided to return to my regularly scheduled programming. It’s been too long and I have decided, well…shit….It’s what I do best.
Watch this space for new commentary on today’s biggest issues.
PS: Yes, I will still publish a few Pics….
….mannequins. Oh wait. You’ll see these become a larger part of our work. Trust me…..
I’m not very good at Photoshop. I took a class during college as an “elective” since it was in the dark ages in the 90’s and decent digital cameras minus shutter lag hadn’t quite been affordable yet. Remember Zip Disks? HA! yeah, I went to a pro digital image joint, had all my artwork scanned in and submitted a zip disk for a portfolio to get into art college. DARK AGES.
Not having gone digital until 2008 (late bloomer?) I have been quite intimidated by the monster that is photoshop. I’m just NOW getting to the stage where I am no longer afraid of the beast.
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THANK YOU!
….and shoot!
Mega Awesome Photographer Zack Arias always makes me jealous when I see his crew go out and attack a GOYA* project. They get a mission and should they choose to accept said mission, they get to shoot and do some creative stuff. I always loved the idea of incorporating a group of like minded people who really want to just be creative, especially if their day job is of the creative sucking kind. So, I started asking around. surprisingly, a lot of people loved the idea and we will be featuring the results right here on Holy Buck, Fatman! If you’re interested in joining up as model, MUA, Photographer or Photoshopper–let me know!
I’ve been scarce lately and it’s due to the editing of our dream. The Dream isn’t over by any means, it’s just that in the real world, real bills have to be paid and dreams don’t really pay them. There is a long term goal and it will be fulfilled. Right now, the need to make money now is becoming more and more of a priority.
It really sucks that the artist, who need a mixture of talent and education to create the things that people see and interact with in every day life are often tossed aside as an afterthought in business. Want ads all over are asking artists to create logos, images, websites and even product designs for pennies–most even want artist to cough up these things for trade, which usually means free. While trade is often good for a student, it doesn’t work too well for a professional who needs the cash to fulfill the commitment we all make to society–carry your share of the burden of life. (although we seem to carry a larger share as middle and lower middle class citizens.)
I know one thing–I love to take pictures. I’m starting to get over my fear of Photoshop and liking my results I get when I mess around with different settings. For instance, here is a pic I took in the Philippines in 2008:
Cool, Huh? Almost looks..unreal. I’ll tell you this: It was barely edited. All i did was bump up the saturation of the blues to bring out a washed out sky. I do remember the sky looking bluer than blue while I was over there. Well–ok, NOT in a heavily polluted area.
Here is another:
I love the yellow. Again, a little tweeking just to bring out the colors. when I look at any given magazine, I am looking at saturated colors. No biggie….
So..I will have to get a job to pay the bills. I won’t get to screw around with Photoshop every day–but I won’t abandon this–not like I did in the last decade. I am an artist…no matter what I *think* I have to be to be accepted. Nawww…..i’ll stick with the artist and strive to get paid for it.
I live in a house full of cats. When I’m working, I’m often surround by them as well.
I either have a basket cat, a window cat, a cat that steals your seat or an annoying Maine Coon cat that likes to plop himself right in front of the monitor demanding attention RIGHT NOW!
Above is Twiglet. She likes to knock glasses of liquid off objects for fun–often with “CRAP, CAT YOU FRIED MY KEYBOARD!” results. Cats are great fun–they inspired the CHEZBURGER network, an entire internet language and even new deities. As you can see, Twigs is what I would call a “Purgatory cat”. Pat ceiling cat, Part basement cat. Good when she wants to be–bad all the time.
They make great photo ops, especially when cute.
Awww…Look how cute! A Panda bear snow sculpture that was done the evening of Feb 5. There were several in front of our home and it was a nice touch to the mountains of snow that seemed to get bigger with each dig out. There were school closings, news of massive federal and state government closings and a lot of really annoyed people who were just starting to develop bad cases of massive cabin fever. Myself included.
What happens as the snow melts? After the media stops paying attention, the legions of dump trucks and earth movers taking the snow mountains from corners finishes their jobs? what about the not so pretty business of cleaning up the wreckage that is left after the snow melts?
Sat, Feb 13. Remember that picture I took of our car? yeah, we had to dig it out. We had to leave our home on Sat for several reasons. One, we were sick of being stuck inside. Most of the people parked on the street had the same general idea. This is when you dig your spot out and put a chair there to save it. If someone poaches a spot, they will probably get a passive aggressive note.
We were lucky. No spot poachers!
Naturally, when you save a spot, you want to place an object that is of little value. On a walk on Saturday, I was amazed at the items just randomly left all over the streets and sidewalks.
I wonder if these are meant to be mere throw away chairs?
Random trash cans and other place holders just littered the streets as we walked to grab coffee. The melting snow also uncovered the horrible reality that snow can cause accidents. Here, littered on the street was the parts of a car, no doubt left behind as the snow melted.
Oh the car insurance industry is going to have an actuarial field day with these past storms….
City trash removal was a serious joke. Trash? Recycling removed from your premises? HAHA! if they can’t get through, they can’t remove the trash. This starts the “put your trash bags in any visible receptacle” move.
Trash bags left in nearly every alley. Recycling wasn’t picked up for DAYS. I believe it went when the trash men arrived. Recycling was left behind everywhere. People drank a lot of beer.
Random objects littered the fronts of people’s homes. Were they used to keep parking spaces? probably.
The destruction wasn’t limited to just trash and objects left behind. Snow movers, construction equipment and salt trucks used to plow and remove large snow mountains may have been responsible in backing into some decorative lamp posts lining Patterson park in Baltimore. On our Saturday walk, we came across a few. 
It’s raining and about 41 degrees as I post this. No doubt that most of the snow will have gone by next Saturday. The landscape will still be littered, the salt washed into the bay, the massive snow mountains a bleak reminder that while it can be exciting and pretty, snow is a destructive force that can not only make for nasty driving conditions, it can really mess up a city that doesn’t know how to effectively handle a massive snow dumping.
Bring on spring. I’m finished with Winter.
Most people have been taking purty pics of the massive snow dump mother nature bestowed upon the Baltimore/DC area. That’s all good. I’ve been snapping away since day one without any real goal. For the last couple of days, It’s been about 40 degrees outside which is melting most of the snow. I realized today I’ve captured a lot of what went on and beyond.
From start to melt: here is what has gone on in our sliver of Baltimore, MD since Feb 5, 2010.
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010–9:30am. My neighbors, some of which I hadn’t met yet (I had only moved to the address in September) are out shoveling what seemed to have been about 24 inches dumped on us. They all collectively got together and made our block slightly walkable. Some of our neighbors are older and unable to shovel, so we all pitched in to help out. Yes, I put the camera down for a bit and decided to shovel, too. After we had made a reasonable path, one of my favorite neighbors brought out a bottle of rum for everyone to sip and enjoy. It certainly warmed everyone up. Yes, this was all before noon.
Trees were wilting under the heaviness of the snow and while we were trying to shovel our paths, we shook most the snow out. Some didn’t make it. 
It was still snowing rather heavily, but we tried to take some of the burden from the branches. Look closely at the photo here: You may actually see a car. or what appears to be a car-ish bump in the drift.
After taking this pic, I looked up only to see what the weird thundersnow plus strong winds between 4 and 5am had created. It was REALLY weird.
Such a bizarre drifting….
It was getting a bit too cold and windy and I was getting a bit tooooooo tipsy, so I headed in at this point. I needed to sleep it off.
We were lucky enough to have stocked up on food, beer, and supplies before all this nastiness came down on us. We had a friend stay with us since he was all alone in his apartment. It was nice, we played games, watched movies, ate food and drank beer. Mind you, we did have a 15 year old kid in the house and while I am prone to copious amounts of beer, It didn’t happen once while during the snow in.
At about 5:30pm, I looked out the main window in my living room only to see….SUN! I begged others to come out, but just decided to do it myself. What I saw next was really cool.
This was Baltimore Street at about 5:30pm. people were coming out in droves if only to walk around and take in the sheer amount of snow that had dropped since the previous day. The streets were covered, no cars were out and people just walked right down the middle. People were just having a good time. The stress/cabin fever hadn’t quite set it yet. It was all still new and pretty.
I decided to try and locate our car.
Nope. Not bothering.
Saturday turned into Sunday and then Monday. We were all content with the idea of just staying in since Sunday night we walked our friend home to his place and realized that the roads were quite horrible. Since our friend is in the medical profession, he was required to get to work the next day come hell or high water. Well, I guess you could say hell froze over and this is what the High water looks like–Frozen.
Fast forward to Wednesday. Rumors had already been circulating about another storm headed to us. I ignored and denied it was happening due to extreme bouts of “get me the FARK out” syndrome setting in . I was sooo wrong. Anyhow, we decided to take a walk to the grocery store to see if, by any chance, they might have gotten some eggs. It had started to snow just a bit as we headed down to the Canton supermarket about six blocks away. It still looked like a damn apocalypse had occurred.
Streets were barely plowed, people had dug little areas for their cars to back in and out of. chairs saving spots as people attempted to drive to grocery stores. Those with four wheel drive were out and about–still not a lot of people. Again, most folks chose to walk in the middle of the street.
Eggs? EGGS??!?!?! WHAT? Forget eggs, you want actual groceries? BWAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!
At least, they had a lot of milk. 
Let me clue you in, though. I’ve lived through 4 of the major snow storms this area has had since 1993. (March 13, 1993–I’ll never forget because I was supposed to be at a party with the guy I had a crush on. ) Baltimore doesn’t really *HAVE* many snow storms. Why invest in hardcore snow removal? I’d rather have the city invest in crime fighting than spend money on snow removal for epic storms that only hit once every 7 to 10 years. I agree, it was amazingly frustrating to have the kids out for more than a week, streets unplowed for more than two weeks and piles of epic snow mountains on every corner, but hell. It only happens here once every 7- 10 years. I see no justification in it.
We walked ourselves home after that and decided to hunker down for the remainder of the week. The kids were out of school until Tuesday. The next day. we decided to just get the hell out and WALK. We walked from our home to the inner harbor–about five miles. It was worth it. On the way there, we cam across some dump trucks dumping massive amounts of snow into the harbor. It created this very strange igloo like pattern in the water.
Finally, someone was thinking. We laughed and headed down to eat. Part 2 to follow.
Yeah, I’ve been a real effin slacker on this thing. I know, I know—My two loyal readers must be pissed to high hell. I used to have scathing commentary worthy of pissing off most conservative shit for brains, but alas, my mind has been occupied.
You see, I was shitcanned at the onset of 2009. In a job market like this one, I have a major comeptitive disadvantage. I have an education focusing primarily on Art (photography to be exact) and I really have little to no desire to be someones corporate bitch.
I have no desire to be rich and famous, no desire to play the stock market. Hell, I even gave my fucking house back to the bank. I’m through with owning a home, having “assets” or anything beyond a savings account that allows for a safety cushion and a few material indugences. all I care about is making a modest living off of doing something I want to do without some money hungry boss hell bent on “Numbers” and “Productivity” breathign down my neck. I want to be my own cog in my own machine.
It’s tough trying to get people to pay for what some consider a luxury during a massive recession. However, there are still Models who are desperate for a professional looking portfolio, a Hungry bride who wants to one up her best friend, a Mother who wants to preserve her belly for her child in the future and children to take pics of.
It’s hard to ignore the crazy, tho. The whole healthcare debate, the greed of the Insurance companies and their republican friends, the fact that people just want money more then the welfare of their peers (which, in Econ 101, I learned would generate more wealth because more people could actively contribute) or even the fact that most people favor an active reform of the whole system. Corporations are usuing the recession to constantly lay people off even if they’re porfitable, the fact that people actiavely loose their unemployment benefits and repiblicans waste time trying to “punish” groups like ACORN instead of saving the country from Tent Cities is just….I don’t know. It’s now that you can really see the true intentions of most of your happy Goppers. They care only for themselves and would love to see all of us who have lost their jobs, homes, retirement savings, investments, livelyhoods, and positive outlook just short of burn in hell because if it doesn’t directly affect them—It’s not their fault–It’s OURS.
Changes are afoot on this thing. I know I haven’t maintained the political bitchiness that this blog was once known for, but hell, I am content with the way things are. Not perfect in any way, but at least my President can think critically.
There are a number of funny as shit instances committed by various members of the GOP. As always, Michael Steel remains a farce to the Black community. I think every time the man speaks, MLK weeps in heaven.
Family Values—HOOT! what a Hoot. It’s just amazing that gay people are a threat to the “sanctity of Marriage” but screwing around on your wife isn’t really THAT bad.
My personal fav of ALL this is the fact that the same God fearing “Jesus Loves you” Crowd wants desperately to stop any kind of care to uninsured people. Now, this always gets me because I’m fairly familiar with the Bible and that guy named Jesus. I believe there is a story that he went out and helped lepers and prostitutes–some of the most maligned folks of his time. If jesus was alive today, he wouldn’t be Rich and would more than likely be uninsured. Today’s God fearing republicans would turn him away.
Think on that for a bit. My sleepy blog will return with some good bitchin’. I promise. Some people are bored at work, dammit.
