Disorderly Content

I'm in Cedar Rapids at the moment, trapped in a really boring hotel and waiting for American Airlines to deliver the suitcase they managed to mislay for the past twenty-four hours or so. So you can imagine that I'm in an easily amused state, by which I do not mean Iowa. Not that I'd have to be so easily amused to find this funny. Someone named Sarah Phelps has recreated classic video games using classic non-video game components. It's cool beyond belief, even if you aren't trapped in a frozen tundra with nothing to amuse you. Go ahead, see for yourself.

Occasionally things work out. Ages ago I'd signed up for a lighting seminar at Keeble, the expensive camera store in Palo Alto. With all my photographic experience, I'm blissfully ignorant about lighting. Most everything I shoot is either outdoors, relies on an on-camera strobe or, more recently, was shot in my little light cube. So when I saw this seminar, I thought it'd be a nice way to dip my toes in the water.

Then things got complicated. The original seminar was cancelled when the presenter had another commitment. They rescheduled me for one a couple of months later, which was last night. And I thought I was set, until a Southern California customer meeting that had been cancelled and rescheduled several times fell on the same day. Given the time of that meeting and airline schedules, there was a small chance I could get back in time. Too small to count on, so I put myself on the later flight and hoped against hope I could get to the airport and catch the early one.

Which - surprise, surprise - I did. I got dropped off at the terminal, raced through security, went to the gate and got added to the standby list. Which, this being a full flight, seemed a waste of time, not that I had anything better to do at the airport. And I guess they had a couple of no-shows, 'cause I got on. And there was at least one empty seat, between two large and unpleasant looking people. (There's a lesson there: if you want to keep a seat free on a mostly full flight, look large and unpleasant.)

So I made it to the seminar with minutes to spare. And learned all about softboxes and kicker lights and even, I'm ashamed to admit, light meters. Even got a little hands on experience with some of the gear. Now if I only had the room to set up a studio. Just think of the fun I could have! And the gear I could buy!

Speaking of iPods and podcasts, I just discovered a new video podcast I have to share with you all. (There are enough of you to qualify as an "all", right?) It's called Mr. Deity, and it's a series of little playlets starring this God person and his minions. Funny, their version of the All Powerful One makes a lot more sense than the version they told us about back in Hebrew School.

No, not literally. I'm only indirectly responsible for aviacide (or whatever the proper term is), and only the ones I end up eating. I'm talking about killing metaphorical birds.

Here's the thing: the combination of work, illness and mildly icky weather has left me mostly indoors lately. So I decided that yesterday was the perfect time to head out, especially with predictions of precipitation on the (again, not literal) horizon. My destination: Lake Tahoe. I thought I'd enjoy the long drive, the chance to get some wintery photos (not much snow, but there was bound to be at least some and some time in the car to draw down the backlog of podcasts in my iPod. Heck, I was sitting on the last four episodes of The ScapeCast, and I'm in those!

So off I went, getting out the door a little after eight in the ayem. Traffic was mostly manageable, there was a little snow on the mountains around Tahoe and I enjoyed the drive. The photo taking was another matter; whether it was the light, the position of the sun or my own ineptitude, I didn't get anything stockworthy. Still, it's good practice, which they say makes perfect.

A little before 2:30 in the afternoon I decided I'd had enough. And being so close to Reno, I figured I'd head over to Boomtown and their weekend all-you-can-eat lobster buffet. I may feel guilty about killing birds (the literal, not the metaphorical), but crustaceans, not so much. I arrived around three, only to discover that the buffet didn't open for another half hour. So, thinks I, I might as well spend the wait at the slots. (Gee, d'ya think that's their plan?)

I started losing, slowly, which is what happens when you play penny slots. Switched machines a few times, generally any time I was down another five bucks. And then started to win/lose/win/lose on a game I like. Keeping an eye on my watch, I was just about to leave when said machine decided to pay off. Not a lot, but enough. For only the second time, and strangely enough, again in Reno, a penny bet made me five thousand pennies. Which was, conveniently enough, enough of a profit to pay for dinner. And the tip.

Quit while you're ahead. And when you're comfortably full. And when it's early enough to get home at a reasonable hour. Yep, that's a few birds knocked down. Oh, and my iPod's considerably emptier. A pity about the photos, though.

Okay, I have this little addiction problem. It seems I'm a photo junkie; if I don't get out to shoot something - anything - at least every couple of days, I get really antsy and start climbing the walls. It's been a couple of weeks, so you can only imagine how bad I am right now.

It's a combination of factors that's been keeping me from being out and about. Factor #1 is the weather, which has been foggy, hazy and now just plain wet. #2 was a mild case of the flu I had a week ago. I managed to discharge my work obligations - barely - but had no energy left for photography, assuming I could have found something I wanted to shoot. And then work intruded in a big way: factor #3. I was in New York all last week for our annual sales kickoff. Photogenic place, New York. Except: not if you don't get out of the hotel. Which we mostly didn't, aside from the group dinners every night. And those involved walking a few blocks in frigid winds to a too-small restaurant and a meal (and a fair amount of alcohol) that took most of the night. Get a few hours of sleep and repeat.

So not a lot of opportunity for pictures. In fact, the only pics I managed to take in five days were out my window to the office building across the street. You didn't expect me to go cold turkey, did you?

Or is it? A friend sends me this list of movies that Starz is running tonight.

• 3-Iron
• The Last Shot
• Wolf Creek
• Havoc

They say that every picture tells a story. So what story do these four picture titles tell?

Okay, maybe it only seems that way from my Left Coast vantage point, but I can't help mourning the loss of Molly Ivins both as a rare Liberal who was willing and able to speak truth to power, and as a rare wit who was both disarming and well armed. Tributes compare her to Mark Twain, which to my mind shows respect for Twain. I only got to know her through her columns and her books and a few of her TV appearances, but she's one of the few famous people I'd like to have spent an evening listening to. Her life was both well spent and way too short.

Sent to me by a friend; the original is at www.adbuzz.com/bushbuzz.htm: