Via mefi, a link to the first completed effort to photograph all the US national parks in large format. They’re pretty good, too.

Subject near and dear to my heart: North Cascades, including this image.

Also: ‘How to Photograph Landscapes Without Becoming a Landscape Photographer,’ a how-to essay on photographing landscapes. From his section recommending vests over backpacks: “Lots of pockets for lenses, film, filters and holders, meter, PDA or notebook, some food and water in the back pocket, safety equipment in the inside pockets, all handy to reach, quick to use.” Safety equipment.

In the Photography DIY department: Photographic Equipment Made From Inexpensive Materials. I’m diggin’ the panoramic monopod.

Over in Florida…

Bristol, who has flown planes for 12 years, said he made the flight to the Bahamas several times a week and never experienced a similar incident. When he and his co-pilot Dennys Villavicencio, himself a seasoned aviator, crashed in Maule Lake, marine rescuers were able to safely bring them to shore in front of a crowd of media and onlookers. The plane’s owner had put a “Re-Elect George Bush” sign on the plane, a sight that seemed surreal as it sank.

Photo here.

John Perry Barlow got busted for alledgedly posessing some controlled substances, but the evidence was found during a security search of luggage, at the airport. The 9th circuit court has ruled that warrantless searches at airports are only authorized for the purpose of detecting weapons and explosives. How much farther down this road are we going to go?

Now the more authoritarian among you might say that if these searches reveal other, non-terror-related, criminal activity, then so much the better. The 4th Amendment should provide no sanctuary for the guilty, whatever their crimes. But randomly searching people’s homes against the possibility that someone might have a bio-warfare lab in his basement would reveal a lot of criminal activity. And it is certainly true that such searches would reduce the possibility of anthrax attacks and enhance public safety. Still, I doubt you’re ready to go there. Yet. Given a few exotic outbreaks, you might be. Should that day come, would you still believe such searches should not be precisely limited? This may seem hyperbolic, and of course it is, but it’s actually a fairly short conceptual distance away from what’s going on in the nation’s airports at present.

Assuming the possibility of appeal – which is a certainty if I lose this round – this case may go on for a long time, but if that’s what it takes to prevent the imposition of general warrants upon the traveling public, I’m willing to go the distance. John Gilmore, bless him, appears willing to do the same. We’re trying to set a precedent here and the government is determined to prevent one. Only through such solitary struggles as this one can we preserve the dreams of Jefferson and Madison through this period of panicked expediency. On September 11, 2001 I sent out a spam to my mailing list in which I warned that “the control freaks will be dining out on this day for the rest of our lives.”

I mean to deny them at least one small course in that terrible meal.

Via boingboing:

NYT story about a dude named Clifford Ross, who invented a camera for 9×18 negatives.

An AP story about it, and Clifford Ross’ web site.

His 5×10 foot print of Mt. Sopris is on display in NYC. Be sure and check out this detail page.

Sometimes I want to write, but I have no idea what to write. It’s akin to needing to pee, and then being unable to once you’re facing the urinal.

A lot of what I write stems out of boredom. Not just the links I pass along here on the ‘blog, but the whole thing. I’m bored, so I write something. Usually it’s crap. If I write it in one of these ‘blog entry things, I’ll just close the window without submitting it.

Sometimes I want to write about how big a challenge the whole world seems to me. But that’s not something that’s easy to express, much less understand if you’re on the outside of my skull. And most of you are on the outside of my skull. I’m trying to move forward in small ways, succeeding at small things. Some are so small as to not really count among you earth humans, but they’re big deals to me.

Like, right now I’m fretting over some stuff. ‘Fretting’ is the wrong word, but it’s the closest approximation that doesn’t make me sound like I have OCD. For instance, my ear is mostly ready for travel, but because I lack a proper venue to express my frustration over having to spend an extra month here, I keep complaining about it when I talk to myself. I imagine I’m talking to the second doc I went to see, and I explain it all to him, and my ire rises, and if he were really there, he’d be cowering in a corner. I just can’t seem to let go of the fact that I’m sick. It’s like reverse hypochondria: Instead of imagining I’m sick, I want to keep being sick so I can complain about how sick I am. Or something.

That’s not ‘fretting,’ is it?

Today I drove to the mountain pass, and I felt it a little bit in my ear, but it’ll be fine soon. So now all that obsessive stuff can abate. I hope.

There are other things like that, but thankfully I find it hard to carry more than one at a time. However, that’s because the one thing is so completely full of energy and stamina. Like trying to talk to someone while there’s a TV on behind them. The TV will not be ignored. You’ll end up staring at it no matter what. The person will try to pull your attention back, but it won’t last long. Even if it’s an infomercial for a personal exercise device, or maybe because it’s an infomercial for a personal exercise device, you’ll eventually drift back to it.

Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about having an ear infection. I was laying in bed, and no matter what I did, I was grinding over in my mind how I missed Thanksgiving, how all the things I wanted to do hadn’t come to pass. And how if they’d told me it was an allergic reaction, I’d probably have been able to make it (it was my new down comforter), how I’d endured the doctor visit thing twice to no real effect other than to find out that my hearing is perfect, and how I’d spent a bunch of money on allergy drugs I didn’t really need. On and on and on.

I got up and went out and watched ‘Blade Runner,’ because it always puts me to sleep if I watch it alone, at night. I dutifully fell asleep about the time Roy and that other android meet the guy who makes eyes. And then, when it was over, I woke up. Went back to bed and couldn’t stop thinking about my ear.

“I designed your ears…”
“If only you could hear what I’ve heard, with your ears…”

Sometimes, it takes making a sandwich to remind yourself how good a sandwich can be. There’s no reason this sandwich should be all that good. Ham, emmenthaler, left over potato hot dog bun, Miracle Whip. But the making of it, the eating of it… In the middle of the night.

It reminds me of the Ken Nordine bit where he can’t sleep, so he eats just about every bit of leftover food in the fridge, enjoying every last morsel as if it were the finest cuisine in the world.

Hairlessmunkee wrote something about trying to figure out whether to take a certain gig, one that would be about jamming rather than playing songs, and this got me thinking about a few things.

First, I have a friend who jams around in Houston. He made a decision to pursue a professional path despite being an absolutely brilliant musician and songwriter, so the pressure’s off for him. He doesn’t have to make the music thing work. He writes stuff, plays with friends, sometimes does studio stuff… just whatever.

I was in a band with this guy (think: quiet guy behind keyboard), and I remember those days as infused with magic. Just total fun, going to the studio in the middle of the night and making strange little recordings, playing our one big outdoor gig in Market square… And I was remembering all the music I got turned on to around then, and I kept coming back to Adrian Belew.

Not a lot of people know who Adrian Belew is, but just about everyone’s heard him. I mean, have you ever heard a little tune called ‘Life During Wartime’ by Talking Heads? Well, then you’ve heard Adrian Belew. He’s the guy with the big nose playing guitar in Talking Heads’ movie ‘Stop Making Sense.’ He’s also the guy with the big nose playing guitar (with a spatula) in Laurie Anderson’s ‘Home Of The Brave,’ pseudo-namesake of this very ‘blog.

He was also one quarter of King Crimson when I got into them (he’s still doing the Crimson thing, though I’m not as infatuated with their output of late). He played in Frank Zappa’s band. He formed a band with some old friends from back home in the 90s, called The Bears, and they played two of the most enjoyable rock shows I’ve ever attended. Dude’s all over the place. He’s put out a bunch of solo records, and three more are in the can awaiting release. And I once shook his hand.

So it’s in this spirit that I offer two musical tracks, especially for you Mr. Hairlessmunkee, in hopes that you’ll seek this guy out. ‘Swingline,’ and ‘The Gypsy Zurna.’ The latter comes from an album I’d put on my top ten, ‘Desire Caught By The Tail,’ which grew out of Belew buying a bunch of studio time, and approaching the creation of music as if he were a painter.

I’m reading a thing on the web about insomnia. I keep seeing the term ‘good night’s sleep,’ which always reads as though it’s taken from some ad copy. Especially when it’s buried in a paragraph of medical terminology.

‘Good night’s sleep.’ When I read that, I don’t think about sleeping, I think about waking up in the morning, satisfied, purposeful. The image is a bright, clean bedroom with light pouring in the windows. A man in white flannel PJs wakes up and stretches under the covers. He rolls out of bed and stands erect, raising his arms, breathing in a breath that’s half yawn and half breathing exercise. He’s going to march into the bathroom with a smile on his face, to brush his teeth and take a shower. Later, he will drink a cup of fresh-brewed coffee, despite the fact that he’s already perky as all fuck.

Oftentimes, sleep is the most interesting part of my day. The dream world presents so much more stuff to explore than the waking one, mostly because your mind fabricates more and more detail the closer you look. Waking life is like that, too, but the sheer tedium of concrete reality means there are no fractals of consciousness, just euclidian prison bars.

Maybe I’m seeing it all wrong, but the only thing that’s really fascinating is people, and if you’re me, people are a little *too* fascinating. That’s in the sense that they represent so much information it’s hard to know when to stop taking it in. It’s like being star-struck by everyone you meet. You just want the dynamics of the human experience to stop, to freeze, to turn into a state rather than a process. Just stop so I can get a look at you, figure out where I stand in relation. Discover what our relationship is…

And that’s my problem. Relationships come out of processes, not states, and processes overwhelm me more often than not. I’m learning, but it’s such an uphill battle.

So I’m the loneliest man in the world, unable to sleep. Some part of me is keeping these hours in order to reduce the chance of human contact. You know, one of the most important things the brain does is regulate its state. It does much of what it does just to maintain the state it’s in. It keeps itself busy with things that will prevent it from changing. This is a medical fact. If it weren’t, we’d all go crazy and our social worlds would fall apart. So here’s my brain keeping me secure in my loneliness at 7AM because I get overwhelmed around other people. It thinks it’s doing me a favor.

Fucking brain.

How is it that the Rude Pundit can make the essential moral argument, and put it terms any dipshit with the will to read can understand?

Soundtoys.net.

I especially like this one. And this one (be sure and click on the little CD player).