E G O S P E W

Nightlight Unretouched, originally uploaded by LlewellynL.

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?

<nerdtext>
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.)
</nerdtext>

Homo Sapiens Elgoog & Aidepikiw

Life, Myth, and Naming Conventions

During some recent exhaustive research for an entirely unrelated subject, after hours illicitly spent with my secret nighttime lovers Elgoog & Aidepikiw [the names were changed to protect Carl & Linda], I discovered there are now SIX kingdoms of life! Not two! It’s all been reorganized out from under me, while I was busy mastering my own life’s kingdom. Back when I was in high school, it was so simple: Animalia and Plantorum, or whatever. There were some uncomfortable rumblings about viruses and people still argued over whether they possessed 48 or 46 chromosomes but generally, I walked around erect, proud to be a vertebrate.

Ah, those were the good old days . . . nine planets, no plutoids. Evolution was a science, not an optional myth. And Jupiter had an impressive but manageable twelve moons.  Pop quiz: name them! “Yeah, okay, sure . . . Europa, Io, Ego, Id . . . you know, all those Jupiter/Zeus lovers and descendants. Freud must have dreamed about getting into those heads.”

Nice try.

Well, science never sleeps.  In the past few years our giant friend, under intense government agency probing, has revealed many more secret moons — 63 total, as of today.  Yikes, where was I?

(continue reading…)

I was most excited about my wife’s and my recent decision to purchase a fancy new sewing machine. This has been an item of her desire for a long time and I fully support acquiring the tools to make her happy. (Though I am not so dim as to buy her, say,  a vacuum cleaner for her birthday.  We tend to both get excited over Dysons and I realize I would be getting it as much for me as her.)

She is incredibly artistic and handy and can knit or crochet absolutely anything in about two episodes of Dexter. (Offered into evidence: Teddy bears Campbell Brown and Lynley, knit from scratch.)  When we lived in Brooklyn she used to actually knit bullet-proof vests for the officers in the local precinct. (That kevlar yarn was a beast to work with. She had to special-order 9-millimeter teflon-coated armor-piercing needles.)  It’s impossible to calculate how many lives she must have saved over those harsh winters.

It became a friendly game that whenever I brought up the concept of acquiring a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle, she would idly and codependently mention the fancy sewing machine. She apparently equated both items expensewise, and indeed I had no problem spending an equivalent amount on a Super-Duper Sewing Computer that she would coax to weave colorful rugs and darn life-size presidential portraits and such. But the model she wanted was much more modest. In reality the Ninja (itself a very modest 250cc) would cost about 10 times the Singer. Talk about a guilt trip.

Anyway, now the Singer has arrived, and I assume I have the Ninja green light, which coincidentally, is the desired color! Yay!

(Important Note to Wife and Sister and Concerned Readers: Relax. The above paragraph employed poetic license purely for entertainment purposes. There is no money for silly dangerous toys. I am not running out to buy a motorcycle anytime soon. Likely never.) Unyay. 

The Big Day

We opened the carton together, with equal anticipation. Oh-boy, oh-boy, oh-boy! You know, it’s programmable with little patterns, and that’s a big turn-on.

(continue reading…)

Grendel was a sweet, large black dog with three serious character flaws:  she was twice my size and scared the liver out of me, she chased and bit postmen, and she left soft fecal piles that were inevitably my demise when playing in Charlie Creamer’s long sloping isosceles back yard.  Charlie was my best friend.  His father was the college chaplain.  His mother, Donna Reedlike in patient exasperation while raising her independent-minded rebel-in-progress, was generous with the paper towels and never winced at the smell.  Charlie and I were faculty brats.

I attended second grade while Charlie forged way ahead in third.  He was loudly protective of Grendel and vowed to save her from the evil arm of the Postal Law — which besides swinging aggressive chains and aiming spray repellant at her eyes, also threatened to have the monster agressor impounded.  Charlie’s grand plan to placate the authorities involved his molding her a muzzle out of clay in art class.  This seemed like a fascinating project, but to my unsophisticated mind, stretched the limits of materials properties, not to mention, art.

My last and most intense vision of Grendel and Charlie is this:

We were walking across the college campus (as faculty brats are wont to do) towards the new dorm construction that would result in Sherrill Hall.  (For any ancient alumni reading this, calibrate your mental maps.  My topographical recall is infallible.)  On our left was the recently completed chemistry-physics building and on our right was “South Dorm”, one of three early-’50s belligerently-rectangular brick edifices lining Pulteney Street.  Charlie, Grendel and I were meandering southward, considering a traversal of St. Clair Street to check out the construction site for the future dorm.  It was a hot summer Sunday with nobody much around. Moreover, there were limitless cinder blocks, wooden planks, deep pits, drying concrete, wet mud, and enormous worker wasps to investigate.

Grendel, gifted as most dogs, gathered our intentions and took the lead, cantering across St. Clair.  At the same moment, an enormous old Plymouth sedan had turned the corner from Pulteney, driven by a senior member of the faculty (I’ll call her Miss Murdoch) and accelerated up St. Clair, unaware of our intentions or trajectory.  Grendel bounded ahead, directly in front of Miss Murdoch.  The car’s domed hood was so high and Miss Murdoch so tiny behind the wheel that she never saw Grendel.  Meanwhile, Charlie and I, frozen at the curb, held the perfect perspective to observe every detail as the car rolled slowly at Grendel.  

Directly in the Plymouth’s path, she was overwhelmed by its mass.  But, being so old and towering, the car also had large wheels, high axles, and just enough space for Grendel, cowering and yelping, to crouch down as the car moved over her, its drive shaft spinning against her fur.  Miss Murdoch never had any idea, never heard Charlie’s screams or Grendel’s protests, and off she drove in total oblivion. 

Grendel emerged as the rear bumper passed overhead, very ruffled, a bit oily, but intact.  She exploded back to full height and, at top speed, headed back past us, terrified, straight for home.  Charlie took off in pursuit.

I started to follow but realized I couldn’t run before attending to a frequent sartorial affliction.  “Charlie, wait up!  My shoelace . . . I have to tie it.  Hold on!”

“No-o-o!  I can’t!  I have to go . . . ” Charlie wailed over his shoulder.

How could he abandon me?  I just have to tie my shoe. 

So I stood, watching the black streak of Grendel disappear into the distance, cutting diagonally across the quad, and Charlie running the fastest I had ever seen, after her.

(1992) 

A 3-1/2 year old denizen of this city, my Tibetan Terrier Harrigan, on our customary midnight walks, has learned who belongs on his streets versus that which is alien. He passes countless curbside trash cans, cardboard cartons and garbage bags (tied into a pair of cute little bunny ears) with little more than his normal canine curiosity. Even tumbleweed plastic sacks blowing down the street and garbage-rifling bottle-redeeming homeless people no longer warrant a second glance.

Among the silent apparitions which, by contrast, have deservedly prompted a sudden round of baying were:

1. A 15-Foot-Tall Yellow Ditch-Digging Caterpilar Machine Towering Dinosaur-Like, Asleep in the Street
2. An Abandoned, Shadeless and Extraordinarily Hideous Table Lamp, Awaiting Its Next Owner
3. A Suzanne Somers Thighmaster

I am prepared to control his natural instincts to attack at the appearance of dogs three times his bulk or the occasional aggressive feral cat. But on a particularly quiet evening I was startled by the alarm he raised at beings unknown ahead. My New York nerves screamed “Mugger Alert!” What hooded figure was about to jump out from between the parked cars or darkened stoops?I followed Harry’s lead cautiously as the leash sang with tension and we approached the threat. Rising from the curb 20 yards ahead, amid the normal refuse, was a large empty Gateway Computer carton. (In order to convey their South Dakotan origins, Gateway uses white boxes printed with irregular black spots, cow-fashion.) Harry knew that this cubist black and white animal he had never seen before and it certainly was not native to his New York.

I praised his vigilance, then let him come to terms with the spotted box, lifting his leg in enviable expressiveness, and add it to his roster of the rare, but benign.

This has been an absolutely true story.

I am proud that this account was published in the September 1997 issue of “Animal Tales”, the magazine of the Humane Society of Prince Edward Island, Canada.