RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Well, quitting the internet didn’t work. And if you happened to visit yesterday only to see that this site was gone completely, that was an accident. I don’t know what happened, but it’s better now. For my triumphant return, please enjoy this deeply bitter and miserable rant:

Until a couple months ago, there was a dirty, dingy old Laundromat near 20th and Spruce. Even though most of the machines were broken and the place smelled like death, (mice behind machines) it was the closest Laundromat to my apartment and I’d wash my clothes there anyway.

The only employee I ever saw was an old man who never seemed to leave. He wasn’t very friendly, but he was pushing 80 and working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week in depressing dump of a business. Who would be friendly?

The Laundromat closed in March. The owners are renovating the space into a nail salon. I do my laundry at 15th and Spruce now. It’s much farther away, but it’s cleaner and friendlier.

On Tuesday I was walking by the old Laundromat. Sitting on its stoop was the old man who used to work inside. He was filthy, unshaven, wearing dirty clothes and obviously homeless. The Laundromat left, but he didn’t.

I was in a bitter fucking terrible mood, so to be honest, this sad sight barely touched my conscience. I wondered for a second if I should give him the address of the Social Security office, or the number of a social worker. But I didn’t. I don’t know where those offices are, and I don’t have the numbers to any social workers.

And what good would it have done? I assume that his life is over. What kind of help can anyone possibly give him? He’d have moved on if he wanted to. That shitty fucking place was his life. That’s what touched my conscience and made me sad. Miserable people and their shitty fucking lives.

If anyone out there is a more hopeful person than I am, you know where to find him.

You know what, internet? Fuck you. Seriously. You’ve been wasting my time for far too long and I quit. I’m sick of your news and your message boards and your goddamn opinions. I can’t take it and I’m not playing anymore. I gave you my time and energy for years and for what? So my Alexa ranking can hover between 5 and 10 million? I just can’t do it anymore. Day in, day out. Fuck it. You can take your goddamn Cat 5 cables and shove them up your shiny blue router. I quit.

A little over a month ago I woke up early and set out for a pre-work bike ride. Since I work at a non-profit, showing up to work straight after an 11-mile ride is perfectly acceptable.

Also, morning rides on the Kelly/MLK Drive loop are also a hell of a lot more pleasant than afternoon ones. Without rollerbladers, dogs, children on scooters, people randomly wandering in front of you, walkers who take up the entire path, oblivious crew brats and all the other people that make me hate people, an early morning ride is actually nice and relaxing.

But a month ago, my ride was cut short by a glint of silver down in the Schuylkill. As I crossed over the MLK Drive bridge just west of the Waterworks, I noticed this flash of light. When I got to the far end of the bridge I was shocked to see that it was a Loon eating a fish. The fish, reflecting the light of the sun was what caught my attention. I had to cancel my ride and get home to pick up my camera.

Why?

Loons are some of my favorite birds. I’d also never seen one anywhere near Philadelphia. You think it just looks like a duck with a cockroaches body? Well listen to the sound they make:

Loon 1

Loon 2

The loon couldn’t choke down the fish… but it tried for as long as I watched it. Some fishermen told me that they come through every year. If you’re looking to catch them on the Schuylkill leg of their migration, just head down to the Art Museum about a month ago and keep your eye out. Until then, here are some photos:

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So Second Life is kind of for weirdos, but when someone takes an idea from Second Life (flying penis) and makes it a reality… and buzzes Chessmaster/Russian opposition leader Gary Kasparov with said flying penis, then it’s fucking awesome.

At a minimum, it’s better than Polonium poisoning. Now at the risk (or absolute guarantee) of sounding like an asshole, wouldn’t something like this be great at a Hilary Clinton rally? I’m seeing a big black one. But maybe I’ve gone too far… Still had to say it though. Sorry.

In September 2006, while wandering aimlessly around the streets of Montreal, I accidentally found the 2005 World Press Photo Exhibition. Five Canadian Dollars got me in the door. The rest was a horribly depressing orgy of brutal, beautiful photography.

While getting out and seeing hundreds of 24×36 gallery prints is great, the 2007/2008 photo + photographer interview feature on this year’s website is pretty damn cool.

Also, as a word of advice to all you people out there with a flash site. This is how you do it. Simple, clean and to the point. Why make it a flash site at all? Be sure to click the little magnifying glass in the lower right.

Check out Tim Hetherington’s soft, blurry, outstanding winning photo and fan favorite, Platon’s portrait of Vladimir Putin. I’d link directly to them… but it’s a flash site. LINK

Look, listen, learn.

My google homepage “Quote of the Day” feed occasionally puts up quotes from famed Jupiter Resurrectionist, Arnold Toynbee. Here’s today’s:

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
- Arnold Toynbee

And people wonder why Toynbee ended up on so many tiles.

Not long ago I had the privilege of shooting the Fairmount Arts Crawl. Although it was a sprawling event that covered an enormous area, I could have stayed at the Neighborhood Potters wheel all afternoon. Here are a few shots from the demonstration wheel:

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When you go camping in Acadia and you live in Philadelphia, here’s what you do:

You get in your car in early evening and you drive. You hit North Jersey at the end of rush hour. By the time you leave Connecticut, it’s night. Massachusetts and New Hampshire fly by in a haze of rest stop Starbucks. When you get to Maine between midnight and 1AM, you still have 4 hours of driving to go.

I rarely talk about music here, but I became a Radiohead fan in those 4 hours. I’d put Amnesiac on the pre-Ipod CD changer thing. It came on around 3AM. I was on a small highway in rural Maine. My girlfriend was asleep. I was alone on the road. It was the perfect setting for an alien abduction. It wasn’t my favorite album and it still isn’t, but for that hour it was just about the greatest thing in all of creation.

And then you reach your destination.

You’ll approach Seawall campground just before dawn. Before you get in line for an early morning campsite, pull over just past King’s camp store and walk out onto the rocky beach. Smell the air. Listen to the waves. Watch the stars fade as the sun rises over the ocean.

This time of year I start to crave Maine. I just talked to an old friend up in Portland and she kept bugging me about when I was going to come up for a visit. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t live there and vacation here.

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Want to hear something that will like totally blow your mind? I mean something so big that you’ll be all like, wow man that’s proof of a higher power and shit. Or it’s just coincidence. Either way, here it is:

From earth, the angular size of the sun and moon is virtually identical. That means that the sun and moon appear to us here, to be the same size. This produces the amazing coronal displays seen during a total solar eclipse. The odds of these 2 objects lining up so perfectly are truly astronomical. (no pun intended)

This is even more outstandingly fucking fantastic when considering that around 5 billion years ago when the moon was born, it was much closer to the earth. It moves away from us at the rate of about an inch a year. That means that we humans exist in that incredibly narrow band of time that allows us to witness a total solar eclipse. The odds of sentient life to exist on a planet where this phenomenon exists, during the infinitely small period of time when it does exist is like, wow.

I’d be willing to bet that the presence of total solar eclipses make this planet far more unique than any of the life on it. When we enter the galactic version of the global economy, this might be earth’s biggest draw. Tourists will flock from light years around to witness the beauty and majesty of earth’s 1 in a trillion miracle of light.

What I’m saying is get your ass out there and witness one of these things before you die. Your next chance is August 1st. The only problem is that you have to go to China. Here’s a map of every eclipse between now and 2025. Plan now!

I’m knee deep in work, but I had to share this. Best headline ever:

Great tits cope well with warming

At least one of Britain’s birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) commented that other species are likely to fare much worse than great tits as temperatures rise.

Every month I check my stats and pull out my favorite search referrals. These are search terms that people enter into google or yahoo or possibly even lycos to find my site. Over the past few months, the hits have gone from 30% insane to only 5-10%. Whether that’s reflective of the site’s recent content or of new algorithms over at google I don’t know. Whatever the trouble is, the recent insane search deficit has forced cuts in the totals. Down from over 30 just a few months ago, here are April’s top 20. Enjoy:

20. my own birds repellent frequency
19. custom storm trooper suit
18. his massive buttocks
17. r.i.p love park
16. party and bust a nut
15. tiny blowjob
14. construction hardhats for sale in reno
13. bigfoot sightings 2007
12. fuck buddies near oil city pa
11. dog crap pickup kempton
10. ball shaving
9. pictures of dogs with penis out
8. black and white photos love
7. what are these indicative of voice tremors pitch changes facial twitches and shaking
6. anorexia africa
5. drawings of jewish people during jesus’s time
4. spacecraft music
3. gay donkey porn
2. netti v casual encounter
1. did the nazis have a motto

In May of 1962, Centralia PA’s volunteer fire company was busy with their annual set-the-landfill-on-fire Memorial Day spectacular when something went horribly wrong. A vein of coal ignited and spread to the mines beneath the little mountain borough. Forty six years later that fire still burns.

Since then, Centralia’s population has dwindled from about a thousand to about a dozen. Why? Occasionally the earth will split open, sucking anything on the surface into 150 foot chasms of fire and poison gas.

By the mid-80’s most of Centralia’s population had been relocated by the federal government. In 1992, the state of PA claimed eminent domain over the remaining properties. Those that were abandoned were torn down. Those who chose to stay do so at their own risk.

Which brings us to last Saturday. I took a trip with fellow photographers Albert Yee and Andrea Gingerich to the ruins of the burning town. None of us died, and a good time was had by all. Enjoy the photos:

This is my favorite photo of myself. It was taken by Andrea Gingerich during a weekend trip up to Centralia, PA. I’ll post my own photos later on in the week, but none will be as good as this one. I love it:

When moving out on my own, I had visions of base, raw survival. One bad week and I’d end up like that bird in the post below this one. On the streets, dead and discarded. It turned out a lot better than that.

On May 1, 1998 I moved to my first apartment. For all you slow witted people, that was 10 years ago today. It was a $650/month 2 bedroom at 46th and Osage. I worked at a video store and ate a lot of Rami’s lunch-cart falafel. My deep seething and totally unfair hatred of Penn students was also born.

My then unrealized goal was to move to West Philly and to find a job with Penn. After that I could enjoy their staff benefit of free classes and work my way to a free elitist degree. I eventually found my job and started classes 8 months later.

West Philly was a lot different back then. Penn still had a virtual wall up around its campus. There wasn’t much glitz around. The cute little renovated rowhouse across the street from my apartment was still a rundown place for local crackheads to gather and argue into the night. You could buy a house then for 1/5 of what it would cost you now. The bowling alley next to the video store was still an abandoned warehouse where my colleagues and I went for “coffee breaks.”

The apartment was great. Like any self respecting 19-year-old we socialized heavily. Weekend get-togethers swelled into small parties. There was sex, drugs, debauchery, dancing, drama, video cameras and thank fucking god, no such thing as youtube. But stupid college kids we weren’t. Half of us weren’t even in college. And beside that, there was also plenty of discussion of photography, music, movies, theology and art. But we weren’t a bunch of know-it-all, pretentious assholes either. There was a respectable balance.

Most of all, I liked lying in bed in the dead of night with the window behind me cracked. I loved the sound of the train off somewhere in the distance. I still do.

But back to May 1. In what would become a ritual, when the truck was returned and the heavy lifting done, my roommate and I got a six-pack and some take out. Ten years ago today, I opened one of the windows in my massive new bedroom, cracked a beer with my roommate and sat there feeling something I will never feel again.