The silvery magician guide in that dream I had yesterday got me thinking about wizards and mages. I’ve always liked stories where a hero has to learn from a wizard, from Arthurian legend, all the way up to Pai-Mei in ‘Kill Bill Vol. 2.’

Merlin, Pai-Mei, Obi-Wan Kenobi… an uncountably large number of kung fu sifus in Hong Kong chop-suey movies… There’s something fascinating about the idea that someone will take over your life that way, and you’ll be better for it.

I’ll probably have more to say about this later.

Involuntary Parks.

Involuntary parks are places where humans aren’t allowed to go, so the wildlife has flourished. This includes places like the Korean border DMZ, Rocky Flats in Colorado, Chernobyl, and the Croatian border, which is heavily mined.

And my refrigerator, up until very recently.

Following a recent research expedition to the Chernobyl region, a U.S. Department of Energy official asked us to assess the ecological impacts of the April 1986 Chornobyl disaster on populations of animals. We replied that, although a quantitative assessment is difficult, the net ecological impact has been positive. After a long pause, the perplexed official asked how it could be possible that the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, releasing between 100 and 200 million Curies of radiation into environment, could produce positive ecological consequences. The answer was simple – humans have evacuated the contaminated zone.

Yes, that’s right. Humans are more toxic to the environment than 200 million Curies of radiation.

Which reminds me: ‘Stalker,’ Tarkovsky’s film noted for its mind-wrenching stillness and quiet, set in a mystical place called ‘the Zone’ which is off-limits to humans, is now ‘Stalker,’ the first-person shooter set in the Chernobyl no-man’s land. How do these kinds of things happen?

Not quite done (the crisper drawers are pretty freakin’ scary), but a nice stopping point to take a picture.

I’d also like to take a moment and sing the virtues of Apple’s Image Capture program, which saw a lot of improvement in 10.3. I used it just now to get this picture from the camera to the hard drive. Among other improvements, it now lets you share your camera’s storage over the network through Rendezvous. (For those moments when walking across the house, unplugging the camera, walking back across the house, and plugging it in again might be too much of a hassle.) You can also do things like view thumbnails sorted by DPI or shutter speed.

Speaking of cameras, here’s a crap picture of the Pentax:

October 13 is Freeway Free Speech Day.

Silver means magician.

I had another collaborative dream, and it was a doozy. No fewer than 50 people were working on it… I managed to make it all fit into a cirque du soleil context, but no telling what everyone else saw.

The important part is that there was a guide. He was dressed in a silver spandex suit, with the appropriate fantasy makeup for the cirque. He pointed me in a few directions from time to time, always with good results. In fact, we had a discussion about this new system, which is much more interactive than previous ones.

A story I might tell about it goes this way:

A crowd of people is gathered in a huge atrium of glass. It’s night. The people are wondering what’s next, because they’re being passive in their dream state, and frankly, I’m doing the same thing. I’m not sure what the next thing is.

Mr. Silvery Guide shows up and stands next to me, looking sly. His eyes move to his hand, which is barely held out from his body, trying to be surreptitious. Held between his index finger and thumb is a straight pin. His eyes dart up. At the top of the atrium, which is a huge space, there’s a house-sized balloon. It undulates slightly like a soap bubble, and glows from the inside with a mysterious light. And it’s falling, really fast.

I look back to Mr. Silver with a smile, say, “Fuck yeah!” and grab the pin. I hold it straight up. I seem to stretch a couple of stories’ worth and meet the balloon, which shatters with a huge explosion of detritus. Everyone gathered cheers.

The sun has been released, and it’s now daytime.

George Soros now has a ‘blog. I’m trying to think up a parody, but it’s not happening. Quality control issues demand that I not post what I came up with.

Speaking of not posting what I came up with, I haven’t had much to say lately. I wrote some tiny things that I might put up here, but at the moment I’m perseverating on all the stuff you can do with photographic film once you take it out of the camera. My next place is going to have to have space for a darkroom…

It’s funny, because back when I was a teenager (and even earlier than that) I wanted a camera. A serious one. I wanted to be a photographer. I told my parents I wanted a camera, and they said, “You have a camera.” And they were right: I had a 110 instamatic. And then I’d say, “But I want a real camera…” And they’d say, “How are you going to pay for it?”

Well, I’ll tell you how I paid for it: I waited 20 years. I went to the thrift store a few days back and they had a Pentax MV (50mm f/2 35mm SLR AP) for $14.99. THAT’S how I paid for it!

Now, if I’d had any kind of foresight (or fore-vision ESP kinda stuff) when I was a teenager, I’d have taken $14.99 and put it in a savings account, and would have waited until now to buy a digital camera so sophisticated there was literally no way to imagine its existence in 1980, plus the beat-up SLR from the thrift store. But oh well. Lessons learned, eh?

The MV is totally manual except for the shutter speed, which is set automatically given the in-camera metering and the aperture. It can also accept a manual shutter release, so I’ll eventually take it for night-time star trails and moonglow landscapes, once I know enough to be able to develop and print my own pictures.

So if any of you out there have old Pentax K-mount lenses, or darkroom equipment you’d like to get rid of… I am, most definately, your man.

(Also eyeing the Kodak Retina II at the same thrift store… A fully mechanical camera from the late ’40s. One thing at a time, though…)

Cook (and refrigerate!) with a solar funnel.

Who needs a slow-cooker crock pot when you have the sun?

Not enough to clear cut the trees, they gotta clear cut the mountain.

YouForgotPoland.com

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski: “They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s true. We were taken for a ride.”

Also: Pre- and post-debate analysis, courtesy of mediamatters.org. The basic upshot: Pre-debate, the analysts were saying the event would be ‘make-or-break’ for Kerry. Post-debate, the same people say it doesn’t mean much. Why?

If you missed the debate last night, you can see some predictably enlightening spin at the DNC and GOP web sites.

The DNC video features split-screens of Kerry on one side looking presidential, and Bush on the other side looking frustrated and bored like the small child that he actually is.

The GOP video is a bunch of quotes from Kerry, supposedly about his alledged ‘flip-flopping’ on the issues, particularly of national security. The soundtrack features an annoying ground loop hum, as well. You’d think that with all the money they’ve got, they could hire someone who knows how to get rid of ground loop hum. But the substance of it has little to do with the debate itself, and more to do with the troubles Kerry has had fighting off the Republican noise machine. That is, he’s quoted out of context saying things that, if you look at them in just a certain way, might be a different position from the last carefully-edited clip they just showed you.

The GOP site is also plastered with pictures of Kerry. You’d think Kerry was running as the Republican, just from glancing at it.

The other thing about the debates that really struck me is how much Bush whined about how hard it is to be president. One of the catch-phrases he repeated incessantly was, “It’s hard work.” Yes, Mr. Bush, it is hard work to be president. Did they not tell you that when you agreed to be their front-man? People work their whole lives to take on that challenge, Mr. President, and are you more deserving than they are?