Archive for December, 2009

Moon Shot

Originally uploaded by CABridges

I have acquired my Guilt Camera, the camera Teresa bought me to help assuage her guilt over spending money on the Bon Jovi concerts she plans to see in a few months. Never mind that she saved from her own money for over a year to do this; since her fairly low income childhood she's never quite gotten over the guilty feeling she gets when she buys something for herself, especially if she is forced to (gasp) buy it for the full price.

So she spent some of it on a new camera for me — which, coincidentally, will also be used to take pictures at the aforementioned Bon Jovi concerts — and I've been playing with it. My old Canon Powershot A630 has now been replaced with a Canon Powershot SX20IS. A bit more oomph than before, and much better in low-light conditions. Like, say, concerts.

More photos to come, I'm sure. And yes, this was bought at a discount with me chipping in, so she still managed to avoid retail.

I, by the way, have no problem whatsoever spending money on myself and am slowly teaching her the knack.

I am watching Stephen Fry in America, where the celebrated British actor and author drove his black London cab through all 50 states, sampling a bit of each as he went, and I'm finding that as I talk to my wife during breaks that I keep wanting to speak with a British accent.  Not as an affectation or joke, mind you, and I'm not using any obvious British slang.

I just quite naturally begin choosing my words more carefully, pronouncing them more traditionally, enunciating them more precisely. I place emphasis on different sections of the sentence, making observational sentences more of a question than a declaration. Somehow I manage the trick of sounding both self-deprecatingly apologetic and mildly superior at the same time.

As it seems to happen with appalling regularity whenever I watch such programmes, one must assume a genetic source. Somewhere in my history there lies an English gene, ready and willing to leap out out a moment's notice and force me to pronounce "schedule" with a "shed."

"I am going to be speaking to you this evening with a British accent, so do be prepared for the words you hear to come with a little more authority than you're used to. And you could have had this, and that's the real tragedy." — John Oliver

It fades, it fades. A few hours from now I'll once again be dropping my Gs and coarsening my speech. But for now I find myself transported with the challenge of delivering sentences with complex constructions, where clauses leap like playful porpoises around each other, swimming in the same depths as Wodehouse, Chesterton and the Pythons.

Mind you I'm well aware that Americans have whelped their fair share of speechifiers who could give any Brit a run for his money, and there are certainly any number of British accents that are at least as harsh to the ear as any Southern twang. And I perform the same linguistic gymnastics (in much different directions) whenever we watch the Beverly Hillbillies, or anything featuring mobsters (the movie "Oscar" can have us speaking in broken Italian for days).

I'm also painfully aware that to an actual Brit my accent would sound like nothing of the kind. Years of television and movies have instilled in me a sort of conglomeration of tongues from around the island, with some Yorkshire running into my Lancashire, with Black Country vowels trampling all through my Ipswitch and East Anglia and Liverpool mixed together in a hellish brew. Think John Cleese by way of Ringo Starr and Douglas Adams with some Dave Allen sneaking in, all the worse as Dave Allen was most definitely Irish. Or, to put it in more understandable terms to an American, imagine someone making an American accent by using pronunciations from Jersey, Georgia, Boston and Texas all in the same sentence.

But for now in my head I am British, soft-spoken and wryly humorous and calmly amused by everything. And a jolly good day to you all.

Yes, fine, rip-proof mesh and weather-proof nylon makes perfect sense for a durable camera bag. But do they all have to look the same?

Like all photographers pro and amateur, I am on the eternal hunt for the perfect camera bag. And like all great eternal hunts, my quarry does not exist in the real world.

Partly this is because your needs change. A bag for an all-day hike to take pictures of a transcendent mountain lake sunset would be substantially different than the bag you'd throw your stuff in to take pictures of your neighbor's car, and neither may handle air travel very well.But mostly because I'm really picky and skilled at determining what I don't want without ever quite articulating what I do.

It should be small enough to be convenient as a daily take-to-work bag but include padded compartments for my camera and accessories. It should have pockets for my other assorted doodads — pens, notebooks, ID, extra SD cards, batteries, what-have-you — but not be confusing. It should be durable. And, very important, it should be able to double for a casual backpack or messenger bag, ideally brown or charcoal gray (definitely not "I'm-a-camera-bag-steal me-black").

My other drawback? Has to be cheap, which knocks out some perfectly good contenders.I'm starting to think the easiest way to satisfy my various needs is to find a really good backpack and just add padded compartments for the camera gear. But that seems like cheating, and frankly I also have trouble deciding on the perfect backpack. Also, quick camera access is usually easier from a dedicated camera bag and you never know what sort of horrific accident, perfect moment of beauty, or spontaneous nude eruption might occur.

At the moment the closest (if still on the pricey side) (from my viewpoint, not compared to most camera bags) are the various offerings from Domke, but I know already that whatever I ultimately purchase will disappoint me in some way. This one appeals to me greatly, for example, but while I could make up for the lack of gadgety pockets with makeshift additions the price is still a sticking point.

There is no perfect camera bag. There is only the quest.

It started when Canadian musician Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines flight, waiting at O'Hara in Chicago. People on the flight pointed out the baggage handlers on the ground tossing around guitar cases, which turned out to belong to Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell. Carroll's pleas fell on deaf ears and he discovered upon arriving at his destination that his custom Taylor guitar, valued at $3,500, was severely damaged. There followed a year of Carroll's attempts at getting United Airlines to even acknowledge the incident, much less pay for the $1,200 of repairs that still didn't quite restore the guitar to its former sound.

Finally Carroll told the last representative, a Ms. Irlweg, that he would write and produce three music videos about his experience and release them into the wild.She may have been less than impressed. That was then.

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StarShipSofa, the British online audio science fiction anthology magazine, has released a novella by Lawrence Santaro called "Lord Dickens's Declaration." You can listen to it for free — that's what they do, after all; present audio presentations of top science fiction by authors such as Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Michael Bishop, Tad Williams, Charles Stross and many more — but for a limited time you can buy a limited edition ebook and the proceeds will go towards helping Jeanne and Spider Robinson's bills as Jeanne fights off a rare biliary cancer that's taking everything they've got.

I've mentioned here before my love of Jeanne and Spider's work, and any chance to help out (while getting new stuff to read at the same time) is a Good Thing. You can read about her ongoing battle (and her fight to continue producing a Stardancer movie) at http://stardancemovie.blogspot.com.

What's "Lord Dickens's Declaration" about? Think "steampunk/time travel/alternatehistory" and you won't be too far off. There are gentlemen and ladies and intrigue and SCIENCE and steamships and long discourses on the nature of time itself. Also, cavemen. Santaro usually writes horror fiction but he rises to the challenge here. The book is also beautifully designed and illustrated to look like an old and treasured book, which just adds to the steampunk feel. Nicely done.

While you're in the area, check out the StarShipSofa's podcasts. They're free, professionally done, and a welcome addition to your portable library.

The results of the first round are in, and of the 25 top stories selected in my group, two of them are mine. This pleases me, and causes me to weep for the next generation of writers.

Starting at midnight, you can vote for your favorite Tweet Me a Story story, and I'd appreciate it if you would consider voting for mine. If you thought them worthy, of course. Or even out of misguided friendship, shameless pandering, or guilt. It all works for me.

The stories chosen were:

From my blanket, I watched the surf. "It doesn't get any better than this."
From his time machine, me from 2023 sighed. "No, it doesn't."

and

"That's it, I have to know. You've been with me and with Mike. Which one is the better man?"
I smiled. "The one who didn't have to ask."

And you can vote here. Vote early and vote often!

I read a lot. An average of a book every two days (I've slowed down a bit over the years). And while I love finding new authors, new series to get lost in, sometimes there's nothing better than realizing it's been just long enough to go back and reread an old favorite.

At the moment I'm rereading Steel Beach by John Varley, for perhaps the 15th time. Hard to say why it appeals to me so much — along with its companion/sequel Golden Globe — without saying "everything," but it works for me on a lot of levels.

Quick synopsis: Humans occupy the other planets and moons in the solar system, which is good because the Earth was invaded by aliens so powerful they won in less than a day and may never have actually noticed we were there. A hundred years later on the moon, intrepid and increasingly dissatisfied reporter Hildy Johnson shares her time between the hustle and bustle of Luna City and the untamed wilderness of the fake Texas inside of the maintained Disneylands, tracking down stories and dealing with the near-godlike Central Computer that keeps this idyllic life going. No one is hungry, almost every injury can be healed instantly, gender choice is purely optional and as easy to change as buying a new car, and Hildy has amazing luck when new stories break. So in a world with virtually no death and no want, why does he (and so many others) keep trying to commit suicide?

A huge, rambling book, Steel Beach lets us listen in on the wiseass thoughts of a world-class cynic as he (and later, she) investigates the underbelly of the perfect world. Lots of sex but no real sex scenes, lots of philosophical musing, plenty of action, some great characters, a fully-developed and utterly believable future world, and the best opening sentence of any Hugo- and Locus Award-nominated book, ever: "In five years the penis will become obsolete!" There's a strong Heinlein feel here — along with some obvious homages to the master — but with more laugh-out-loud humor and people you might actually imagine meeting.

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Foggy Morning

Originally uploaded by CABridges

I've usually got a camera with me, but I rarely remember to use the thing unless something really jumps out at me (unlike our paper's staff photographers, who know how to stalk settings and wait for the perfect photo to appear).

This morning fog was everywhere, every light was a shining star, and every body of water a misty loch in which hidden monsters stirred. Even in retention ponds.

In just a few minutes here on the east coast, the long awaited season finale of Dexter's fourth season arrives. This show, already amazing, has been absolutely brilliant this year with Dexter's interest in 39-year serial killer Trinity, played to perfection by John Lithgow. So, in a show full of twists and turns, what can we expect? My guesses:

- Dexter will kill Trinity.

- Dexter will kill Trinity, but in such a way as to set things up for an uncomfortable 5th season such as, say, stabbing him to death on the table during the morning meeting at the precinct.

- Dexter will try to kill Trinity and then discover, to his shock, that Trinity is, in reality, former president Warren G. Harding.

- Dexter will try to kill Trinity and fail, only to have

Drive down our street and you'll see decorations galore. Strings of lights, intricate creations of wire and tinsel, huge inflatable Santas and reindeer and Snoopys and rotating snow globes.

Except for our house, where it remains resolutely dark.

Not out of any dislike of the holidays, really. We like seeing everybody else's decorations. We just don't get that motivated to do it ourselves. We have a Charlie Brown tree we stick on a table and that's about it.

Now Halloween decorations are a different thing entirely. We have an extremely unsettling fake rubber bat that's been hanging in a tree by our front door for about six years now, perfect for freaking out pizza delivery guys and hopeful religious visitors. True Halloween decorations should not look like decorations. No "Happy Halloween" or cartoon-eyed skeletons for us. Why put up plastic pumpkins when a few heaps of real bones saved from a month of dinners by the front door can be much more disturbing?

Basically, our goal is to become "The Old Bridges Place," the house in the neighborhood the kids dare each other to approach. Festive holiday cheer, no. Terrifying home decor, yes.

Ho ho ho.