E G O S P E W

Remember reciprocity failure? Sometimes you just don’t need Photoshop.

This is an actual unretouched photo of some unretouched structures in my nightly meanderings (Feb 7, 2009 ~8:30 PM).  No super-saturation or false-color IR.  All I added was my name and copyright.  How fair is that?

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All the color here comes from the various monochromatic artificial light sources and of course the wonderful hues you can coax from the evening sky with a 4-second exposure.

I used to love to shoot out the apartment window in the middle of the night and let my Nikkormat EL stretch towards 60 seconds with slide film to get the ‘real’ colors from the Upper West Side tenements, topped by urban nimbus streaks. Besides the amplified subtleties the results incorporated the non-linear sensitivities of the different color layers when exposed outside the roughly 1 to 1/1000 second range they were calibrated for, hence reciprocity failure.

Another note about this image is the lens: the little Nikkor 50mm 1.8 (effective 75mm in DX). The VR zooms are pretty amazing but if I want the sharpest of the sharp, I snap on this baby (and lock my vision into medium-telephoto for better or worse). It provides that extra kick I look for in the detail and undoubtedly adds to the overall subliminal effect on the viewer. (It makes me kinda yearn for one of the Micro Nikkors, except they are all longer and slower and bigger and cost 20 times as much.)
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Call Me Curious (Magenta)

Call me uncool, call me urban-not-country, but I hadn’t heard about this particular recreational trend until today, when I was doing some research on the noble gases, answering the kinds of questions that come to me in the shower. Really. Like why are the inert elements all gases at room temperature? And why do they glow? I have thoughtfully provided links to the answers; how noble of me. The second answer is a fairly complete treatment of neon and its history in sign usage, on a site called SnowGlow, and what led me to the subject of this post.

The Greatest Question

Those elemental issues have now been superseded by this greatest question of our time: Why do snowmobilers put funny lights on their rides?

The Hypothesis

I suppose it could be attributed to the typical filtering down to the general public of ethnic or political gestures considered cool and exclusive. It doesn’t take long for any powerful symbol to be co-opted by the masses. Consider the histories of the Raised Fist Salute, the Fist Bump, and the Yellow Ribbon of Tony Orlando and Dawn’s excruciatingly popular song.

The raised fist, whose indelible first impression for me was for Black Power, has since the 1960s been used by millions of people in many different movements. The fist bump, popularized by football and basketball player types, is now observed among hip nerds and even less hip CEOs. And, as anybody who watches the Oscars or follows a gas-guzzling SUV down the freeway knows, that yellow ribbon (in the song, a secret signal for an ex-con) has morphed into little fabric loops of every dye-able color symbolizing any worthy cause.

Wool Gathering

Note that if you dig just the littlest bit into Wikipedia (with the customary Skeptic Filter engaged) it becomes pretty clear that most of these symbols in some form preexisted “modern day” usage. For instance, the raised fist was lifted in the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution(s). The fist bump is a traditional Jamaican greeting. And the yellow ribbon story has existed in poem and song for centuries, since the dawn of time, as it were.

Anyway, what I’m trying to suggest is that lights under snowmobiles may have originated from the influence of Music Television videos depicting flamboyant Hip-Hop artists flashing personalized transportation tricked out with ostentatious lighting effects reminiscent of the style devloped by the Custom Car lowrider movement in Southern California of the 1950s and ’60s.

The Digression

In Brooklyn, whence I hail (at least for the past tenth of my life), a lot of the cars have tiny blue lights mounted on the hood, facing forward. I’m not sure what it means, some gang sign one assumes, but after I moved here I thought seriously of wiring a couple of those babies on my (otherwise unmodified) RAV4, just to fit in. Then I wasn’t sure exactly how to effect their acquisition. I don’t often find myself in an auto supply store, and Borders is disappointingly thin in that department. If I were to happen into a local shop, would I ask for “those cute little blue lights I notice on the indigenous automobiles”? Or how about, “Yo, gimme somma them blue gang lights. Y’know, for the hood o’my ride. Like the Bloods. But blue. The Blue Bloods. Aw, nevermind.”

Maybe once a year, I get my car washed, whether it needs it or not. Usually I’m piggybacking on the free coupon from the 10-minute oil change. Isn’t it fun while your car is being pulled through the 5-buck car wash, killing time in the accessory shop, looking at all the crap people buy to junk up their cars? Oh, how tempting some of that stuff is, way more sophisticated these days than pine tree air fresheners or Playboy mudflaps. A lot of it is high-tech, requiring batteries. Like blue lights. But the better stuff plugs into your cigarette lighter, like the Neverdown DeLuxe Auto-Vibrator I found in my neighborhood Instalube’n'Wash. Just keep the motor idling so the car battery doesn’t drain. Don’t forget the tip. (That’s a complete dramatisation of course. But you get my point.)

The Evidence

But back to the subject. First of all, it kinda seems that you can’t get much lower than a snowmobile, heightwise. Okay, maybe a toboggan. But then where would you put the hydraulic lifts? Now I’m not saying these snowmobiles actually do that hip-hop thing like the socal chebbies, though it would seem to come in handy for ski jumps, moguls, xtreme snowmobiling or whatever. All I know is what I see from the photo above and the SnowGlow website. They’re just kinda sitting there. Glowing.

Whoops, I spoke too soon. Here’s yer jumpin video. Check out NiteRide.

Conclusion

So, I have come to conclude, snowmobilers put funny lights on their rides because it looks freakin awesome.

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Next: Céleste Gone Wild (video!)
Our 1969 Citroën DS-21 and my plan to put lowrider lights under her rocker panels and cruise my hood.

Pseudointellectual Language Discussion #73
More Questions Than Answers

How is it that “honeycomb” became the authoritative nomenclature when describing a hexagonal pattern?

Bee’s Honeycomb	Cow’s Reticulum

(continue reading…)

Don’t use a name invoking invincibility when we know servers or at least their sysops are mere mortals.

Offered in Evidence, the “Always-On Websites” site-down page:

(Unretouched screen capture, January 5, 2008.)

Courtesy of a Reality-Based Training Session at The School of Hard Knocks,  we may deduce that the following titles for your new Web Presence are probably ill-advised:

• Always-On
• Never-Down
• CrashPruf
• UpAnAtEm
• Error-Free
• PerfectGenius
• Spotless-Syntax
• Faultless-n-Friendly
• Zero-Defect
• Immune-to-Laws-of-Nature
• Technical Difficulties, Pshaw!

Ldawg.4377 scowled at the shimmering image of the vidAAAgent® so in his face. “I want a wucking window! And not over a wucking wing!”

The unflappable vidAAAgent replied in soothing but rapid synthesized tones.  His/her accent was gender-neutral and the perfect non-specific mid-national blend, neither too Chicago nor too Mumbai.  “No problem. Please take note: Window-locations-present-increased-radiation-levels-potential, which-have-been-demonstrated-in-non-trivial-samples-to-cause-genetic-mutations-and-cancer. Some-mutations-are-beneficial. Notice-ID ISO-3-7-7-2-1-dot-9. I can offer positions 47-A or 233-Gamma.”

“Gucking Gamma?  The Greek side of the pucking plane? Nope. No way. I want my A. Left side, baby. Pucking posh, all the way.” Then Gamma return. See the sucking city going out. See it again coming home. Gotta catch France’s second liberty gift, the condolence for 9/11-2: the Eiffel Twoer, an exact lifesize stainless steel replica of the one à Paris. Built on Freedom Tower’s ashes. Freeffel Twoer.  Hmm. Too many tragedies. Way too. “Yeah, 47-A. . .BOOK. . .SEAT. . .47-A. . . . PLEASE. How many complimentary pretzel pellets I get?”

“No problem. You have reserved seat 47-A. That flight comes with Class4 amenities: Recycled water is supplied in times of demonstrated medical emergency only. Pretzel pellets are an optional extra. Please acknowledge by stating I Accept.”

“I ucking accept! Yuck.”

“Please acknowledge by stating I Accept.”

“I. . .ACCEPT! You tucking turd!”

“Thank you. Would you like to order optional pretzel pellets for an additional charge?”

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m sorry. Nuts are no longer available.  Would you like to order optional pretzel pellets for an additional charge?”

“UCK YOU.”

“I’m sorry. I detect stress in you vocal kinetics. Please remain patient. Would you like to order optional pretzel pellets for an additional charge?”

“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”

“No problem.  Thank you. Your validity for passage has been confirmed. When it comes to air travel,  we realize you have non-zero but limited options and we appreciate your choice of AllAmericanAirways.”

“You’re too wucking welcome.”

Ldawg slapped his transPod® into client-autoguide mode under AAAserver control. It dutifully jerked toward the jetway, joining streams of similar, though personalized, individual environment capsules, or iEpods™. Shiny decals of aliens and holograms of middle fingers danced off their contours. The stadium sized fuselage was nearly full on his level. As he was glided down the aisle, the nine pods in his row shifted out and back just as he arrived and his slid neatly into place, left-eyeport snugged neatly up against the multiCoat Plexiglas. The 10-10-10 configuration was a model of efficiency. Didn’t the French come up with decimal time, too? “CHARGE” and “LINK” indicators blinked as the transPod auto-Mated with the Airbus 999 and his accumulated waste was evacuated. A fresh breeze of tranquility pheromones wafted up through his custoForm bucket. It almost reminded him of a scratch-n-sniff post card of a New Jersey pine barren.

Ldawg.4377 cocked an eye to the left and gazed out at the wonder.