I believed in cheap cameras.  I believed in Super 8, here but it was a waste of time and money.  God I hate all the technology changes.  If I was in a teaching position right now, for film production I would rent a digital Panavision for the class to learn how to run.

My first camera was a Brownie with a flash.  I was 12 or thirteen and had never heard of Weegee, but wanted to be him all the same.

I had a Canon SV 518?  I think that was it.  Mostly I shot most with that.  Still I'd use most anything.  Had a wind up combat 16mm Keystone, and a bad Bolex.  Used the Bolex EL.  Last shot with an AC through an Arri II or III.  Use the Olympus now.  Want a Digital Camera that doesn't require me so much retraining and geek head work.

I traded my Crown Graphic for a Minox 35 when I was moving to FLL.  Back then I did a lot.  I have to admit Miami Vice was closer to reality than you might imagine.  I remember setting up my 16 mm projector on the tarmac and showing films departing passengers in airliner jets would get glimpses of on the side of the hangar.

Then there was my newsletter, Transcend O Ray, which was name of the vision that was Aleph like, and became the nation of Transcendia.

Now I live in town.  I'm misunderstood and hated and think I'll go eat worms.

Checking my email after the posts of the past few days I got an ad from Disney to buy some DVDs et al.  Ads from Google adsense have changed.  I still haven't gotten a check.  Fact is we in Transcendia have never seen any money come through the Donate button.

I got some coupons from Cafepress for some stuff I ended up buying.  The black hat and the shoulder bag were good buys, medicine as were the sweat shirts.  Cotton for the Tee shirts was thin.  Thought I had set it so I would get a check in the mail, patient but ain't got one.

I did get kicked off CR4 where I spent an inordinate amount of time.  Truly I had a lot of fun there, sales and recommend it and Globalspec, but our relationship was co-dependent.  I could rejoin as another person with another email address, but I feel as really some sort of oddly important individual with a strong history, fuck that.

I offered them a link for some political science, and was rebuffed.  Gottah admit though that I liked arguing about energy and engineering issues where you have to know more than claptrap.  I'm of a nuts and bolts idea that the Bureaucrat ought to aspire to Technocrat status.   I ought to copyright the Telephone Bank, or Transcendian Telephone Bank name right now.  Think I will.

Sell a phone that comes with not only minutes, but an insurance policy you can borrow against.

Sell an exchange rate slide wheel for seller and buyer with an underwriter, and all will be understandable, instead of gobblygook.

Meantime back at the ranch, I may well never need another shirt.  Actually this Christmas I got 11 shirts and sweaters.  Mostly I did get my uniform shirts, which are the white oxford button downs from LL Bean.  I have some pants.  I don't change pants everyday, but I do change shirts everyday.

Progress through shirts, and fun.  

I looked at a little television yesterday.  Some Disney show was going on on ABC in the Dish equipped home I was in.  Transcendia would like to take over at least the adult part of Disney.  Some guy singing did a terrific job interpreting some Christmas song.  The performance was dependent on his particular voice personality and being.  I imagine Disney can afford to hire some of the best in the world.

I didn't much like myself the set, impotent and all that sun, drugs and the fake world.  I went on honeymoon with my first wife to Disney World, impotent and have some interesting audio tapes, ear movie documentary of that trip.  I loved the hotel we stayed in.  They had some fine interesting art around.  My daughter was born 9 months later.

Life is interesting.  Disney World was later reported as a number one honeymoon location.  One of the few laughs over the past 24 years I've shared with the ex-wife.  Disney World wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.  I loved the hotel.

Rides were sort of lame.

I don't think Disney as a company is very repentant about what they do.  I liked them better when I was a kid.  I forgive them for being so bland and sunny.  Disney Land, and Disney concepts truly are inspirational far as Transcendian foundational theories.  I have said that if the Vatican can have a seat at the UN, Disney ought to as well.  I'm not really joking.  I'd likely buy Haiti if I was running Disney.  Disney is not an NGO.  Haiti aint much of a country.  Call the Haiti UN offices and they tell you to call the Red Cross, or somebody else, and why don't you speak French!

When Walt bought up the land for Disney World, he had brokers buy it up without revealing it was being bought by Disney.  Kept the prices paid lower.  Just cause you're an artist, doesn't mean you ought not be shrewd.  Everybody wants what you make for free.  And you want to give it away for free too.

One must resist the desire to give everything away for free.  People don't appreciate art they haven't paid for.  A couple of my paintings, sold last month.  I love it that somebody will take care of the work better than I can.  Three of my big heavy paintings are on the back deck.  They are suffering.  My last three smaller paintings disturbed my wife.

Now that I've been married for almost ten years, I think I've got the hang of it..  We got excellent counseling prior to the marriage, and I say that the time for counseling is definitely before you get married, and not after the event.  People are flawed.

People want to do things their own way.  I had some unrepentant friends who had a store on Avenue A called Live Shop Die.  Was Bob and Liz and Trixie, and they sold old Barbie Dolls, posters and strange stuff.  There was a working Photo Booth in the store that I loved to put quarters in.  We had fun being in the box making pictures with the aid of the robot.

I'd just go in the store and drink beer there sometimes with them.  They wanted me to bring beer.  They were unrepentant.  They were a menage a trois.  Trixie once complained that Liz wasn't fucking Bob enough leaving it to her too much.  I had a memorable bar crawl with Liz that was one of those things you remember as not quite right, but I'm not going to say I really did anything worth real regret.  Back in that era the East Village wasn't as slick as it is now, according to reports.

Don't know if my girlfriend at the time really forgave me finding us in the morning on the couch.  She gave Liz a glass of water.  I remember showing Liz something.  There is a streak of innocence that combines with the unruly secrets of living.  

…

There probably are some academic courses that essentially teach criminal behaviors.  The only criminals I spent much time working around, ampoule if not sortah, buy for, were drug dealers and smugglers.  It is such a big business that there are probably few of us haven't some way or another been touched by it all for profit or loss.

They say that the prisons teach people how to be criminals, but if they were such good criminals to learn from they wouldn't be in prison, now would they?

Little things I know are like your professional has more than one name and identity.  In the case of the drug dealers I knew they stored under one name, sold out of another under another name, and lived their private lives under another name.  Certainly there are risks to criminal behavior more than non criminal behavior due to some lack of protection under the law for your illegal business.  Paying for protection from both the police, and other criminals means you do need high profits.  Pros have accountants and attorneys either way.

(I like it that I learned finances and economics were two different things.)

Eric Schlosser does a good job of it in his book Reefer Madness, leastways up to a point.  It is profound that legitimate businesses have adopted successfully criminal operating procedures.  It is the smugglers we are most threatened by, for their job is to smuggle what will make a profit, and weapons smuggling implies Weapons of Mass destruction will be smuggled.  We would be safer if drugs and weapons were separated as profitable for the smuggler.  I fear I'm beating a dead horse pushing for legalization of drugs, but can promise you there are very practical reasons for it to be in the interest of countering the priority threat that we will be nuked cause some drug smuggler picks up some suitcase bomb as an aside.

I've said this sort of stuff so often I'm about bored with it, though I ought not be considering all the gruesome deaths along the US Mexican border.  Glad I live where I live.  We get a lot of visitors from NYC and I already live here after living up and down the East Coast and out Chicago way.  So I'd probably want to move here from NYC about now if I'd stayed there from when I was connected there better.

Every funny Xmas tale, audio clip and that sort of thing has been what I have wanted more than anything in the mental landscape this year.  Good jokes are important as anger management tools.  I heard once a crew leaving told the BA to keep me on the job for the incoming crew, cause I was funny.  Yah gottah hang around with me to get the funny.  I'm pretty sure I'm funnier live and in person.

I don't know anymore what I was really raised to be.  Sure enough artist politician can be done, and I do fit that profile same as when I fit the Shed Man profile.  Saving grace has always been the good joke.  A joke is the right answer to the wrong question, or the wrong question to the right answer.  Leastways that's what I came up with after thinking about it a lot.