I'd wanted to drive up to Montezuma's Castle today - about four hours up the road from here - to shoot the ruins while I can still do that on my own steam. Candy argued that it was really a weekend trip. We're going to a Home and Garden Show instead. I've gone to thise things before. They're dull as paint but I'll take a cmera just the same. I need more portfolio fodder - one or two more archetecturals would be nice. If Candy is feeling good, maybe I can walk us toward downtown and find something there.

I can't wait til the move is over. We've been living in this place for a little over a year now and it has driven me so far into myself that sometimes I fear I will never come out again.

1,472 Square feet to 2,160 square feet! We've been buying furniture and there's more on the list. I'm doing the Great Living Room sort of like an Edwardian Gentalmen's Club - complete with a pool table and Mission (Craftsmen) style couches and chairs. Finally a place that we can make our own.

There is a problem on the horizon and, as a result, there are so many things I want to do over the next year. A little background: the perscription for my glasses has not changed materially for the last 15-20 years - at least that's what I've been told by a succession of optometrists. Over that period of time I've lived in Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and I've had to obtain driver's licenses in each of those places. In the past, when encountering a challenge with "line 4" on the eye test (resulting for an aesthigmatic condition), I've resorted to the "not from the doctor" ploy. Each of those states has had a form. Arizona - according to the clerk at the motor vehicles department when Candy went for her testing - does not have or accept doctor notes. I fear my freedom of mobility will cease in August a year from now. Yes, there are so many things I want to do in the next year.

A Message to KSM (Ken) ... See the link to his blog in the previous entry (below):

Ken –

I spent WAY more time reading your blog than I imagined I would … sucked in, as it were. It’s probably the most interesting and engaging piece of off the cuff writing I’ve encountered in a while.

I tend to jump in on one side of an issue or another, more for the sake of using the discussion as a means to hang my thoughts in the air so I can see what I’m really thinking than I do to score wins or losses. I’ve found the environmental nude discussion has been a great help to me in arm wrestling my way through the competing ideas.

I thought the idea of discussing reality versus perception was interesting – but I think a more visceral exchange might be an exploration of what draws photographers and models to this particular area of the arts – and what is the relationship between these photographers and these models. What drives these people to play their respective roles – freezing their asses off in a Sub-Arctic winter to get a picture of a naked person dry humping a snow bank?

As a parenthetical aside and just for the sake of argument, I’d would argue that perceived reality is the only reality and leave it at that. (Someone once accused me of being the intellectual equivalent of a drive by shooter. I think they probably mean something on the order of, “deadly at the initial encounter but without much follow-up after the fact.”)

Reading your stuff did two things for me, both good in my estimation – ok, maybe more than two things. First, they gave me the sense that I should pass on the coffee this morning and move straight on to the bourbon without benefit of side trips or stops along the way. Secondly and far more importantly, the narrative gave a context to your work that I’d not had previously. The blog was for me the Rosette Stone that I needed to find my way into your visual vocabulary. Where the images were before a series of individual hieroglyphs related more by style than anything else, I now have solid clues to the underlying drift of the “words” and “sentences” and “chapters” of the images – or at very least some clues on how to get there.

Your stuff is WAY more interesting after a couple of peeks inside your head.

I figured E-mail would be best for a personal aisde. Hope you don't mind me cluttering up your mailbox.

Regards,
J

Politics is and always be an attack on the gastro intestinal system. Photography - done as a solitary pursuit or with others such as the occasional model - is much more calming and, in the long run, more productive on a personal level.

I discovered MuseCube in February and I've been building a portfolio there. I have had a similar membership at OneModelPlace for years but it is less than inspiring. MuseCube, though smaller, seems to have a far higher level of intellect.

KSM's blog

A number of us have been engaged in a discussion of "the nude in the envoronment". I've made a number of provocative comments. Conversation has gotten deeper than I imagined it would. The intellectual exercise is making attrophied mental muscles ache - a very good feeling.

Capital Games: "It's hard to know what is more disturbing. That George W. Bush misled the public by stating in the months before the Iraq war that he was seriously pursuing a diplomatic resolution when he was not. That he didn't bother to ask aides to present the case against going to war. That he may have violated the U.S. Constitution by spending hundreds of millions of dollars secretly to prepare for the invasion of Iraq without notifying Congress. That he was misinformed by the CIA director about one of the most critical issues of the day and demanded no accountability. Or that he doesn't care if he got it wrong on the weapons of mass destruction. "

I don't know what I can add except that when Bill Clinton lied, no one got killed.

Should one appologise for the truth?

CNN.com - GOP demanding apology from Kerry - Mar 11, 2004:

"The Bush campaign is demanding an apology from Sen. John Kerry after the presumptive Democratic nominee called his Republican opponents the 'most crooked ... lying group of people I've ever seen.'"

Bush cuts rich in, leaves rest out:
February 3, 2004
BY JESSE JACKSON

"Budgets, as the president said in his Saturday radio address, are a matter of priorities, of making hard choices. The president's madcap tax-and-borrow policies have run up a staggering $500 billion deficit -- without creating the jobs needed to keep the economy going. Profits are up, but so is poverty. The Bush administration is building schools in Iraq, but not in the United States. How do we get out of this box?

The president's budget reveals his priorities, what he truly cares about. It is not a reassuring picture.

The president's first priority remains tax cuts, largely for the wealthy. Millionaires are pocketing $30,000 a year in tax breaks from this president. The president wants, first and foremost, to make his tax cuts permanent -- no matter what that means for the deficit, for investments in our future, for already obscene extremes of inequality in what once was a middle-class nation. "

***********

that says it all. thank you Chicago Sun Times ...

We couldn't find Ossama in Afghanistan so we attacked Iraq ...

Rumsfeld Says Saddam Like a Needle in a Haystack

I guess that means we should now attack the Falkland Islands?

Does ANYONE in the media know how to use the word "alleged"?

---

'Alleged victim had praised Jackson in Feb audiotape' : HindustanTimes.com

"Michael Jackson's alleged 12-year-old victim and his mother made an audiotape in February praising the superstar and signed affidavits clearing the 'king of pop' of inappropriate behaviour.

But the victim's mother now says that she was confused and coerced into it.

The alleged audiotape and affidavit were made after the broadcast of a documentary in which the pop star admitted that he sleeps in the same bed with young boys, New York's 'Daily News' reported.

The alleged cancer survivor's mother went to Jackson's Neverland ranch after the boy was spotted in the documentary and became the target of 'cruel teasing' by his classmates."

---

Does ANYONE still TRY to spreak Engrish? Does ANYONE care?
Is it an alleged audio tape that actually might be something else?

Are they suggesting that the kid MIGHT be a cancer survivor but MAYBE he's not? Or is the suggestion that the person who's making alligations about the tape and affidavit might be not the kid's mother?

Are we so concerned with covering our asses that we've started speaking gibberish?

But the Neo-cons don't think sanctions work .... they'd rather go to war amd kill someone

Key dates in Lockerbie bombing case

If the facts don't fit, go back and get new facts ...

Bush big, bold, visionary, but is he out of touch?"

"In setting out a bold vision of a democratic Middle East, President Bush has once again demonstrated two trademarks of his presidency: a view of his job as a place to do grand things and a willingness to brush aside realities that might not fit into the bigger ideological picture. "

One should always be careful of the bed one makes lest one be forced to lie in it.

That awful Vietnam comparison

"Ah, the weapons. In the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections, this issue may yet become thorny for Mr Bush. America went to war ostensibly to rid Saddam of his weapons of mass destruction. None has yet turned up, despite searches by hundreds of soldiers and trained inspectors. Congressional committees are investigating the quality of pre-war intelligence. In the Senate, Democrats on the intelligence committee are reportedly seeking an independent inquiry that would examine how the White House used intelligence (in other words, whether Mr Bush and his advisers exaggerated). Mr Bush has so far weathered evidence that he overstated Saddam’s efforts to obtain uranium and the links between the Iraqi regime and the September 11th attacks, but voters may ask harder questions as election day approaches."

16 Dead in Rocket Attack on US Chopper

New Attacks Intensify Pressure on Bush (washingtonpost.com)

"But the latest round of attacks in Iraq, and especially yesterday's deaths -- which amounted to the biggest single day of losses since last spring's conventional war -- may prove more significant in strategic terms.

'It is damaging not only because of the tragic human toll, but also because it looks like a dramatic escalation in lethality and therefore begs obvious questions: Are all helicopters at risk now? Are we losing the initiative? Who is winning?' said Peter D. Feaver, a former National Security Council staff member who teaches political science at Duke University.

'If the attacks get interpreted as evidence that the Baathist holdouts are winning, then attacks like this can be as lethal for public support as they are for the soldiers involved,' he said. "

That would be "Two Steps Backward and One Step Forward".

The Salt Lake Tribune -- U.S. military brass push to re-form units of Iraqi army

Its about time someone started showing a little "millitary intelligence".

"Some U.S. military officers in Iraq are pressing to reconstitute entire units of the former Iraqi army, which the top U.S. administrator in Baghdad disbanded in May. They say the change would speed the creation of a new army and stabilize the nation. "

So ... we figured it was a good idea to break up the units then, a few months later we decide it's a better idea to keep them in tact.

There may have been a plan for all of this but it wasn't one that drew on any past experience. It was all an overly optimistic pipe dream.

uh .... Bring 'em On? The President gets his wish.

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Thirteen Killed After Helicopter Attacked in Iraq