Dammit.

Just... dammit.

Thanks for all of it, Terry.
The worst was good and the best was magic.
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Like the lights come on in a nightclub...

.@CARandDRIVER Jesus, you can see the uneven panel gaps from twenty feet away in a 420x200px photo. Man, we were just blinded by love then.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2015

Grumble

I could happily vote for a politician that demonstrates a sound grasp of the sacred principles of Myob and Kyfho. #notholdingmybreath
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2015

*grumble grumble*

I have just returned to my desk from answering a knock at the door*, and am trying to re-board my train of thought for something that I was writing.

I am tempted to print up a sign...

I don't want to talk about my soul.
I'm good on magazine subscriptions.
I won't send you to band camp.
Unless you are a delivery driver needing a signature for a package containing money or something cool that I ordered, please do not knock.

*It was the JWs.

Tab Clearing...

• The Very First DSLR: Funny, 1987 doesn't seem that long ago...


• He was such a nice boy, now he's cutting off heads and owning sex slaves.


• A front-row seat to totalitarianism.

Hoosier Donkey's Ass Found On Wiener's Leathers' Phone.

I'm sorry, that was the best I could come up with on short notice.

You'd think that with Scrabble tiles like "Wiener" and "Leathers" I could come up with the Mother of All Headlines, but no matter how I rearranged them, it was like I had an "S", a "C", an "H", an "A", a couple of "Ds" and a few "Es", an "N" and an "R", a "U"... but no "F". If you can make something better out of that, do share by email.

Yes, that's right, the Indiana General Assembly almost made it through a long session without any egregious scandals, like a rep getting a DUI on the way to the statehouse! Instead, with only a couple weeks to go before everybody went back to their day jobs selling insurance and lawyering and whatnot, Rep. Justin Moed (Dem-My Fair City) displayed a staggering lack of judgment and self-control by getting caught sending pics of his butt to the same college student that Anthony Wiener did.

To give it that Parks and Rec Hoosier twist:

The site reports that Moed's name was accidentally included on a pink leash and collar he bought for Leathers on Amazon.com, which is how she reportedly determined his identity.

Outstanding!

Rep. Moed's office released the following statement in a letter written to the local newspaper:

"I am truly sorry I have hurt the ones I love most with my poor judgment. I am committed to rebuilding trust with my family and my community. This is a private matter and I ask for it to be treated as such. I apologize to my constituents and to everyone I have let down."

No, Justin, I'm afraid your privates became a public matter when you sent pictures of them winging through the airwaves.

It's stuff like this that makes the Chamber of Commerce order Maalox by the 55-gallon drum.
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Overheard in the Office...

Discussing a current political scandal...

RX: "Democrat or Republican? Not that it really matters..."

Me: "Democrat. Which I guess is a return to the normal order of things. It used to be that Democrats would get caught in other people's pants and Republicans would get caught in other people's pockets, but there was this period in the Nineties and Aughties where the world was turned upside-down."

RX: "Now they all get caught with their pants in other people's pockets."

Quoted...

"There's a difference between just carrying a gun, and carrying a gun at people."

It seems to be getting around.

Good! :)
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Huck

Nikon N6006, Kodak Tri-X 400

"Or, even more depressing, go over to Rangefinder Forum or your favorite photo forum ... while there, you can post pictures of your cat taken at full aperture."

I'd just gotten the camera and thrown a roll of film in it to test it. You know, walk around the block and shoot a bunch of blah pictures of trees, sky, houses, and cars under various lighting conditions. On the way out the front door, I half-turned and one-handed this pic of Huck atop his perch in the living room.

The rest of the roll is what I expected: blah pictures of trees, sky, houses, and cars under various lighting conditions, and the camera works fine. Got a great picture of Huck as an unexpected bonus.
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Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Yet another report of a Major Survey(!) reporting gun ownership in decline.

Yeah... "Hi! I'm an anonymous stranger on the phone who is Totally Not From The Government. Do you have an expensive, controversial, high-profile theft target in your house? No? How strange."

Also on the decline according to phone surveys: Pot-smoking and adultery.

The FBI keeps recording month after month of record numbers of background checks, and yet gun ownership is supposedly on the decline, presumably because those purple LCPs Ruger keeps cranking out by the tens of thousands are going to a handful of elderly male gun collector Tea Party survivalist nuts. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
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Fat Bike

IMPD Patrol Bike, Leica R4, Ilford FP4 Plus

Saw these neat fat-tired bikes being ridden by IMPD bike patrol officers in Broad Ripple the other day. Temps in the teens and plenty of snow on the ground, so hats off for being out pedaling. With its warrens of narrow side streets and alleys, as well as the convergence of the Monon and Canal Towpath trails, bicycle patrols make a lot of sense in Broad Ripple Village proper.
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Snow Daze...

Canon Photura, Kodak Gold 200

A snowy brunch with Bobbi and the Data Viking at Zest a couple weekends ago before heading to the gun show. I was burning up a test roll of Kodak Gold 200 in the Canon Photura I won on eBay for $5 from Goodwill. Camera seems to work. I don't know how much I'll use it, but... $5.
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Simple Minds

140-character tweets, speeches condensed to soundbites, 300-word tl;dr opinion columns... it's getting to where caricatures of the other guy's political views are condensed to where they'll fit inside a fortune cookie with plenty of room left over.

Democrat? #COMMIE!

Republican? #RACIST!

Seriously, the "conservative = racism" thing is just part of the orthodox liberal catechism now. If you say you're for voter ID laws, no matter what reasons you give, you might as well be telling your Democrat friend or co-worker that you have a Klan robe in the back of the closet at home. They can literally fathom no other reason why one would require some proof that the registered voter is, indeed, who they say they are other than RACIST!

It's a little creepy to experience first-hand. Especially when the Democrat looking at you accusingly is someone who you actually consider kinda uncomfortably racist themselves. I admit, I look a little askance when someone tells me "Oh, I met this new person yesterday..." and the first factoid they give me about them, after their name, is what color their skin is. Well, unless they were white; that never gets mentioned. It's always "Oh, I met this lady, Sheila, at the shelter yesterday, she's a black gal..." or "Susan, the little Asian receptionist at the vet..." but never "Annie, this white girl I know..." But I'm the racist for kinda being in favor of cutting down on voter fraud?

Tempting fate...

So after getting all excited about going to the range yesterday, I looked at the actual weather, which was going to be high forties instead of low fifties, and the fact that my roommate was home sick from work and might need tending-to, and decided that the range could wait until today. It was going to be warmer today, anyway.

Well, it's warmer, alright. Warmer and rainier. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. Dammit.
.

Still right there waiting...

SoBro Cyclist, Leica R4, Kodak BW400CN

Someone mentioned that they missed black & white film, to which my only answer is that there's no need to miss it, because it's right here. Load some in the old camera, shoot some pics, and develop them yourself or send them off. The cool kids seem to be doing it these days.
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Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom...

So Bobbi is suffering through a kidney stone as stoically as she can, but you can tell she is just miserable. At one point in the morning she went staggering from the smallest room back to her bedroom and collapsed gingerly* into the bed. Little Rannie the cat followed on her heels, jumped up on the foot of the bed, and proceeded up towards Bobbi's head, chirping and warbling all the way.

RX: "Oh, it's so good that your cat is concerned about whether I'm okay or not. She's trying to comfort me."

Me: "Well, that or... Carnivores do follow the weak and sickly, so she could just be hoping you'll fall over."

This is, of course, just joking. Rannie, for all of her often-ill-tempered aloofness, becomes downright solicitous when one of her humans is in distress.

Meanwhile, semi-related and found at Sebastian's place...



*"Collapsing gingerly" was not something I'd seen before.
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Dry Fire

Responsible Tam should do some dry-fire work from the holster this evening because tomorrow is going to be the first time I've busted caps on the clock so far this year. (Last time I went to the range I forgot to charge my timer, see.)

Automotif LXIX...

Driving through the neighborhood on the way to get some drive-thru Steak 'n' Shake and what do I spy?

 Well, that rates pulling over and hopping out to go get a closer look...

Yup, that's a Lamborghini Gallardo, alright. I like the license plate frame, too. And before somebody pops off with some nonsense about a Sig Sauer license plate frame not being very "Gray Man", I've got someone who can articulate my response to that far better than I...
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See sharp.

A neat Tumblr with photos of the same subjects from the same spots done with a Leica M6 film camera loaded with Ektar 100 (that's a pretty sharp film relative to the 200 and 400 ISO that are the most commonly used for non-professional photography) and various vintages and qualities of digicams, from an older 6MP Kodak Easyshare point-'n'-shoot on up through a 40MP Pentax medium format 645D.

The turning of the seasons...

Let us hoist the wassail cup!

And we'll bicycle around the block at 7:00PM without needing a headlight!

Someone elsewhere grumped that if people wanted to take advantage of more daylight, we should just change our schedules, to which I retorted:

Oh, good idea! I'll just change my schedule. And I'll get my employer and all the places I shop and all my friends to change their schedule, too, since changing just mine would be kind of pointless. I think I'll call it "Daylight Savings Time".

Since this is all just arbitrarily agreed-upon convention, we can keep DST year-round for all I care. Having sunset at close-of-business is ridiculous.