*update 5-19-09* Oh no! But I’m not really surprised…

What’s the point of this post? Nothing really, and I don’t know why I should be surprised to realize there is a semi-celebrity factor to the entire Con-model/cosplay scene. It was just weird to come across the info.

I Bought a Van and Then It Got Stolen and Then I Got It Back

and when i got it back… GOOD NEWS!, it came with a FREE METH PIPE!!!,
and a bunch of hooker clothes and ratty makeup bags
and some Stars & Stripes Fruit Punch
and some Mexican toilet paper
and some Teddy Bear cookies
and some Double Stuffed Ravioli
and some Mini 3+2 Sandwich Crackers (Cheddar Cheese Flavor!!!)

and even though they stole my brand new $1500 Chinese GPS/DVD/USB/OPP stereo system, inside was a completely different $400 American stereo system undoubtedly stolen from some other dickhead. Poor loser.

I also got a few extra tools to start up my own auto-theft stereo/hooker biznizz!!

I called the state parole board to find out about the woman who’s papers were in the van, turns out she was locked up the same day for something else. I called numbers on her papers and talked to her husband and grandmother both of whom were relieved that she isn’t dead. He mentioned her children which was sorta sad. They had no idea where she was.

I might go visit her in jail and interview her about her time living in my van. Take a picture at least.

If i ever do, look for it here : www.aHookerStoleMyVan.com

what else…

Oh yeah, despite having made it 22 years without any dents, the hooker done dented it right in front of the sliding door. Ran into a pole. Crap. Perfect no more.

DON’T GIVE BLOW JOBS WHILE DRIVING ON METH!!!

Anyway, her name was Danielle McKee and her rap sheet is mostly drugs and prostitution, she probably didn’t steal the van, but perhaps got it in exchange for a rim job. — i don’t mind publicizing that assumption.

That’s what I have been doing, HOW BOUT YOUS GUYS?

Letting this end is so foolish! If it is no longer profitable for your company, why not sell off the formula and let someone else hang on to it for the diehards? Supposedly the company is open to doing this after 2009, but I won’t be comfortable until the deal is made. Vinyl wasn’t allowed to fully die in the 90′s (thank you turntablists), horses can still go places cars can’t. Gung ho technology and all that, but never eliminate the hard copy. Anyone who has ever wound up a Victrola by candlelight during a power outage knows how cool a feeling that is. Also see Polanoid.

And a song from Athens, GA based Madeline Adams Betty Page from her album “Kissing and Dancing”.

An homage to some of the hottest women I’ve photographed at the convention ’05-’08. Nerds gone wild!

I’ve got to hand it to ya China, I was impressed by the opening ceremony! Photos from Boston Globe. Never mind you used the mind of director Zhang Yimou, who The Party had earlier banned the work of for seeming critical. I’ve enjoyed at least six of his films myself, and we won’t call this egg on your face (no pun). My country loves to first persecute, then later revere, it’s artists as well.

Consider me “visually stunned”…

*ed note: 8/08 Iceblog dropped from blogroll until such time that reports might resume from down under. Just trying to keep the blogroll with as fresh of stuff as possible*

The good news is: common sense did prevail enough to be sure another artistic landmark was preseved. Back in the late 40′s, Greek railroadman Tom E. Stefopoulos drew these great chalk drawing on the concrete columns that supported the viaduct during his spare moments working as a switchman. The columns were saved and now sit half a block north of NW Everett and 10th in front of some flash condo building. True, what you see are large photo reproductions encased in plexi of the actual drawing that lie beneath, but in the name of preservation, this was most likely the best route to go. You can see some more of my personal shots of the columns in their new home here. Also, for cultish fans of the film, an exploration of “hats on beds” that ties into a C. McCarthy novel.

But I especially love this emerging age of social networks that brings you in contact with people like Akif Hakan Celebi.

You can see his Deviant Art profile, also an interview he did with Ukranian MAX magazine. Also don’t neglect his main site and spend some $ if you can!

Wow, I just saw a really intense program on the documentary channel about James Nachtwey called War Photographer. You must see some of the images this guy has captured, understand the reason behind what he is doing.

I’m feeling really conflicted right now about the travel I’ve managed to do myself: some of it relatively ballsy perhaps, but all in the name of selfish kicks and “adventure”. I guess a more positive way to express this feeling is to say the man is an inspiration.

I intentionally use a less than completely dramatic shot (actually of Mt. Adams from St. Helens) from Jasonaut, as we hiked around out there at one point a decade ago together, though I never summited that mountain as he later did. In the shot you can barely make out still stunted tree growth in the area. You’re hiking along, then come around a bend to see what was the blast area. All of the trees are cut off at the height they would have been at the time, giving the illusion it only happened years ago. Elsewhere in the area, there is the world’s longest lava tube, which is far enough away to not feel like the mountain per say. But lava was forced out of the ground at some point in the past and created a sort of smooth lateral hole, which is a natural trail through a cave, with other fissues and tubes leading off of it. You can climb into these fissures, squeeze yourself through an area that might open into a bigger space. At some point it might occur how close you are to an active volcano, and if the earth were mearly to belch, as it were, you would become human jelly without even a moment to realize it was happening. It adds a little something to the spelunk.
To tell more of the story of that ’97 hike: we went with another individual (who shall remain nameless for the sake of posterity, let’s just say a less than experienced hiker). Back in nearby Portland, OR before the trip, this guy had ‘gone to the store’ to get supplies and strained our patience by being gone for a very LONG time while we waited. So we finally loaded ourselves into the truck, drove north into Washington and the area park, messed around in the lava tube, then off to hike/camp overnight on the mountain, a nice little walk but well below the snowline. Suddenly, just as we were about to make camp for the night, Other Guy announced that he didn’t have any food! It turned out his entire lengthy trip to the store was to get/obsess over picking out boots and he’d completely neglected the thought of what he would eat in the wilderness after a day of hiking. Luckily, the others were prepared and had extra to eat. What was he carrying in that little pack anyway? Moral of the story: never underestimate a novice.

A sex worker is a truth worker, if only Washington had the values of most hookers

I am promoting lookism, extending the power of wonderful sexual images and other photographs from around the world that I have shot-

I photograph the sex workers, prisioners, poverty, war and difficult marginal sitautions.
I will now merge these forgotten people with the headlines of the news, usually only shown with pictures of the powerful, or blonde news presenters!!!

The world is a chaotic flux of images upon which we impose a meaning. My photography aims to crush through the imposed meanings to get to the image itself.

From the image I find an infinate number of unconventional meanings-this is particularly why I like strippers and drag queens because I try and remove them from a sexual context and place them in a freespace where all kinds of meanings can arise for the viewers.

I studied photojournalism at The School of The Art Instiute of Chicago and than received a Masters there as well. I was a stringer for AP when I was twenty-four years old. I worked for the mayors office in Chicago and a press photographer for the Immigration Office in Chicago, and Telemundo channel 44 and for the Hilary Rodham Clinton foundation for children. I also won the Patagonia travel award but I didn’t go at the time. I have received several grants but they were never large enough to pay for my photography. I was invited to join Gamma and I received a post in South Asia. I could not take it as we had spent all of our money coming to live in Europe. I continued to shoot everything even though I was not linked to an agency and than Corbis/Sygma picked me up and I ended up leaving.

I love my early photos from my days in Central America in 1982 when I went and photographed prisons in Guatemala. I have travelled around the world capturing everything from sex workers to Russian prisons and riots in Serbia.

(I did a little typo editing in the text, might have missed some-ed.)

Here’s a link to a few photo-essays. Note: click where it says ‘photos’ to begin the text for the various countries represented.

Here are the links to her Flickr (warning:lots of boobs) and MySpace pages. Apparently she has a podcast as well, but I haven’t gotten that far yet…

Also thanx to the Doc for turning me on to Gail’s work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56jr2RZej18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akHq3p5QlCk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznxqvJJ80g

I’m scratching my head as much as you, but I’m not thinking CGI, or if so, the wrong people are working for Lucasfilm… Anyway, advertising is getting more intense, and while on the one hand I feel like a chump for ‘fueling the fire’, this sort of creativity and execution I feel is worth commenting on.
Also special shout out to Robot and her buddy who were recently visiting Iceland, but if they knew anything about this, I haven’t heard about it yet. I think it happened before they arrived and started enjoying the $8 beers-

“I’m really fine, healthy in good shape and so happy to be free,” Mr. Centanni told Fox News. He said the two had been forced at gunpoint to say that they were converting to Islam and had taken Muslim names. “I have the highest respect for Islam,” he said. “But it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

OK: so all you have to do is make some statements that are untrue and pose for the camera reading from this book with a gun to your head and then you are free to go. I think many American’s would jump at this option, nevermind that it is deeply sacreligious – I think the general American and Fox News attitude would be ‘dooped those sand niggers, now on with my spending’. If the Islamic theology is truth, and I don’t think it is, you boys can expect a flaming sword straight up the bunghole as your introduction to the next realm.
And if you’re Christians, as far as your remaining time in this realm goes (and if that theology turns out to be true: in relation to the next realm), the confession clause can certainly be activated and you’ll most likely get a pass on the switch hitting.
But take it to another level, with other captors (and these guys certainly weren’t true Al Qaeda – this video would have been released and then some headless corpses found somewhere down the road), and it begs the ethical question: would you do anything to be released? Anything? Now this applies to other sick and deviant minds that enslave people for whatever psychotic reason. At a certain point there’s something to be said for the victims’ “death with integrity”.

Then I started thinking about why despots of the past may have employed certain tactics. For example in the inquisition: OK, so you’ve claimed Christ as the true messiah after these hours/days/weeks/months of torture – which is great for your soul, because we’ve decided to free it from the mortal coil anyway.
Or in the case of the Japanese rightwing manina that went on in the first half of the 20th century, which went straight back to the bushido code, when prisoners were treated as worse than dogshit, because they didn’t even accept the notion of ‘prisoner’ – it was understood a true warrior would end his own life before they allowed themselves to be captured.
Obviously, these same strict warrior ethics shouldn’t be applied to journalists. I’m just exploring what it is about this article that bugs me….