Close Meditations of a Visual Kind

It is one day before the U.S. Memorial Holiday Weekend starts. All of those Otterz Mob critters that hang round my Studio have been really quiet for the past week or so. Earlier today I went to cut my hair, and the electric clippers is missing. This afternoon Herself and I went grocery shopping, and this is some of what we saw:

Key Lime Pie By Jello
This is the last one on the shelf... two days before US Memorial Day Weekend.


Now, this isn't lime jello, and it seems a bit out of line for Otterz Mob. Except...

Two Fer Price
The Temptations Key Lime Pie, at this price in a local grocery store... two days before US Memorial Day Weekend


And as for Real Jello
Again, the last one on the shelf... two days before US Memorial Day Weekend. Mind you, the generic store brand, there was more of that. Just not the Real Jello.


Ah. Yes. Buddha-con Weekend. Of course.

( Pacific Northwest, Near This Time Of Year )

Why do I photograph stuffed toy otters, you don't ask which is OK because I'm not exactly going to answer. Though I'm also not exactly leaving you in the dark, either.

October is an odd month for me, and after last September with some more similar events added to the memory tree I find myself pausing at certain odd thoughts running through my head. In short, lots of oddness. Sort of like a grown man playing with stuffed toys.

I've been riding this third stone from the star around that same star for nigh onto 21,184 days now, which is 508,416 hours or so of varied enjoyment. This is one of the thoughts that spun out of another one over the weekend, and this one is related to a measuring device called a Hobbs Tachometer. Tachometers usually measure the frequency of revolution of some object, such as the engine in an automobile. Hobbs Tachometers don't measure revolution. They measure time, usually in hours. They're used on machinery that will need particular types of maintenance at regular intervals, just as a car needs the oil changed at certain intervals usually measured by distance. These other machines may or may not be going somewhere in distance, but they are going someplace in time.

Like my Ford 8N tractor. Tractors are one of those devices that frequently use Hobbs Tachometers because they need maintenance and oil and other fluid changes after so much time operating. Measuring time, but not telling time.

But that's not the thought that I thunk over the weekend; that one came along today while I meditated on that thought thunk over the weekend. That thought involved the fact that I, Me, let's see oh yes, that part of me that Rene Des Carte described with the 'Cogito, ergo sum' comment, I don't feel old. In fact, I'm not at all sure how old I am. I mean, really, I don't know. What time am I?

Now, this vehicle that I'm operating, if you will, the one that let me bounce out that comment about 508,416 hours plus some bit and counting, the one with the sensors that let me perceive environmental space and the bio-mechanical activators to move through that environment, sometimes creaks and groans and pops and such from the wear and tear of 508,416 hours of operation. I mean, it's a fairly good bio-mechanical vehicle, mostly self-repairing with some fuel and some rest and some raw materials with which to refurbish. It is still showing some signs, just like Sydney SubaruOutback does, of going around the block, or that star, a few times.

But me, the operator if you will, I don't feel much different in a lot of ways than I did when the vehicle could claim a mere 157,776 hours on its Hobbs Tachometer. In fact, I don't feel a lot different than 61,368 hours, when some of the fellows that I went to school with at the time started giving me a hard time (that would persist for another 52,584 hours) because I still played with stuffed toy animals.

The stuffed toy animals are somewhat peripheral to this philosophical treatise of me, myself, I not feeling Old. What isn't peripheral at all is how this thought caused me to pause and look around my current universe here, and think 'Yanno, I expect this is something that my parents, my brother, my sister, and countless others felt over the passage of far more of those hours than I care to enumerate because I'd need scientific notation and it would look something like, oh, 92 x 10 to the power of 11 or some other fantabulously large number. Every now and then, the absence of those same individuals brings me to a pause as well, like when I think 'Gee I need to tell my brother that he'll really enjoy it. Oh. Right. Don't have that phone number any more, different Plane of Existence. Those pauses make the Vehicle Operator (as it were) pause and do a self-check of sorts.

And the answer still comes back, Right, the Hobbs is turning over but how old am I? I'm... dunno.

Then I see one of these photographs I made either of or with one of the Otterz Mob and I smile again, gleeful, joyful, maybe wishing I could speak Klingon. Because all those hard times those fellows gave me about playing with stuffed toy animals some, oh, 447,048 hours or so ago? All that D00d, you're so weird to still be playing with little boy toys? I received money for one of those pictures. Someone paid me for that play. Revenge is best served cold. It's sweet, too.

And if all of that seems sort of disjointed and doesn't make sense? That's OK. I'm going to go for a walk with my dogs now.

( Do NOT Let Otterz Drive! )

wedschilde, I told you not to give him those keys!

In other news, working on High Key images. While this is certainly an easy thing to do using the wonders of digital editing, it is much easier when one starts off with true high-key images...

In other news again, Houdini is reminding me that there are Sky Grumblers about, and he is in need of lap time.

Might be complicated by the fact that Flickr has now provided a New! Improved! viewing page. The process I've been using to post Pic'o'Day photos used an option available to me on Flickr to 'View All Sizes' which then allowed me to pick the size I wanted to view, and provided the html coding to display that size photo as the required link back to Flickr. The required link back is in the Flickr user agreement. The photos posted elsewhere must refer back to Flickr, eh?

However, the New! Improved! View All Sizes does not provide this handy html coding as it currently displays. Maybe this is upgrade bug not worked out, maybe this is Flickr limiting how their users may display their own work elsewhere than Flickr. Maybe it is browser specific, and Flickr simply doesn't like Google Chrome. I've only looked at the new layout using Chrome, so far.

However, we shall see what we may do, using the previous postings as an example to code the picture to be posted.

( Otterz Love Sashimi, entered in Colour B )

As of today, two days after the meeting, I still don't know how this one rated because the score sheets are not published to the NCFPC web site yet. I do have other news to report, but we're going to go right on to the test of the poll, providing you the viewer with the ability to 'judge' this photo... I hope. If it works, though, I may put the poll behind a cut as well during future Pic'o'Day posts. And, I expect this won't be a daily thing (the poll) as it took ... well, not hours but some time to generate the poll and the pic links and such.

[Poll #1602150]

( Is that a Banana in your belt, or are you just happy to see me? )

The event? Fred-Con. That's the name we gave it, the group of us who in some cases knew each other face-face, in others knew each other via Blogspace, and all of us knew Skippy & Fat Fred Otterz. Someone suggested we ought to get together. Someone else said sure, where? And... Lost Wages, Nevada got mentioned.

What happens in Lost Wages, mostly stays there. Mostly. This is during brunch (bit late to be like Breakfast, really, too early to be Lunch) our first morning there. Otterz and Humanz getting together for a meal, getting to know each other face-face. Even the waiter got into it with us. Grand time.

Posting Pic'o'Day now because this evening I will be at Hospital. Morning chores on teh Ranch are done. Laid in more feed (the never-ending story), replaced a couple of the old feed barrels due to age and cracks in either the plastic barrels or the lids. Yes, I said plastic. The kind used to import olives and peppers from Greece, big barrels, they hold 250 pounds/ 113.6 kg of feed and are weather-proof. Those barrels/lids being replaced are on the order of 8 - 10 years old, and they live outdoors here in North Central Baja Jorja through the heat and sun of summer and the freezing of winter.

OK, so our freezing isn't usually as low nor as long as say South Dakota. It does freeze here. Froze here quite a bit, for the geography, this past winter.

Those cracked barrels (and a few lids) are no longer weather proof. The plastic however is still useful for other things, and likely to show up in other projects as a result. Once it's totally worn out, then we recycle it. Best we can do given circumstances.

Also filled Forrest NissanPickup with petrol, plus a bit for Herself's yard tractor which gets a lot of use around here. Harrison Ford8N Tractor also gets a workout, but he's a bit much weight for mowing over the septic tanks or drain fields, eh? Plus, with moving the adolescent doelings last weekend (and continuing to move them into their new digs) their old spot, out in front of Studio 318 needs to be tilled and planted as a garden.

Will get some other photography work done today before Hospital work. Tomorrow weather permitting, experimental under-water photography in a friend's pool. That will be on film, so delayed gratification for all of us.

( Read more... )

The Ottarz at Fred-Con made a pilgrimage to Rub de Buddha. Group portraits of tourist crowds are obligatory, of course... Feel free to click through to Flickr (the photo is the link) for a Notes Roster of Who's Otterz Who.

In other news, re-shaped the Adolescent Doeling pen today, providing them with some greenery as well as moving it a bit closer to the Holding Pen entry to the Goat Paddock. We will re-claim unused portions of the Adolescent Doeling pen to help re-configure the Buckling Pen into separate but equal (oh, bad Madshutterbug, bad) Buckling and Adolescent Doeling pens inside the Goat Paddock. Worked on that until it got quite too warm out, then retreated inside.

Inside I worked on post-production preparation for the Participant Proofs Disks from the Summer Fae shoot. Only 100 images left to prep, oh my. Rather cross-eyed now so not going to work on those just yet. Should still be burning those disks by Sunday evening (Saturday is a Hospital Work Day, today is Off for that reason).

Joy.

( Popper and Friends )

Popper and some West Coast friends looking over Lake Mead. They took a day-trip break from Fred-Con to see a big body of water; at least that's what they said. There'd been something in the news that morning though about the LVPD and a ruckus at the Bellagio Fountain...

That's Dredd Phredd passed out behind them... too much Vegas, maybe.

Somewhat more seriously, part of the 'mechanics' of photographing a travelling stuffed toy otter that purports to be a photographer involve keeping said otter upright. At this point, we used one of our old point-and-shoot 35mm cameras, without film, and it still proved heavy enough (particularly if along came a breeze) to topple Popper over nose-first. Hanging from the back of Popper's vest is a die key-chain which worked fairly well as a counter-weight. Fairly well, because it also tended to pull his vest down off his shoulders after a while. The long-term solution is a toy camera, much lighter. Best part is (according to Popper) if you look at it, you'll see some photos he made of Vegas.