Garbage Cans and Chamomile
I don’t have a smart speaker. My TV is not stupid, but it’s old enough that it can’t listen to me. I’ve turned off all the things on all my devices for maximum privacy protection. I’ve turned on all the things on my devices for maximum privacy protection. My car is a 2007, so Russian hackers can’t apply my brakes from their phones just for fun. But I do […]
Friday
I am looking at my email inbox on one monitor and the cursor last highlighted a robo-generated email from Amazon asking me how I liked my clip-on guitar tuner. I am also looking at the New York Times website front page on the other monitor (I have two monitors because of work) with a few pixels showing at the top of a huge full-width ad for the ShowTime show […]
A Walk in the Clouds with my new XS
This is one of the first landscape images I made with my new iPhone XS. I converted it to B&W in Snapseed. When I think of all the toxic photochemistry I’ve inhaled throughout my career trying to perfect B&W darkroom techniques, it makes me a little sad that an algorithm can usually do a better job. But not that sad.
The Deli Lama
This cartoon is a shameless pseudo-hack of two jokes, so no, I didn’t think of the punch line, so sue. The first joke really isn’t a joke per se, it comes from a book called “Awakening the Buddha Within” by Lama Surya Das, aka Jeffrey Miller, aka “The Deli Lama” which is what his mom called him after the author in his 20’s, a Jewish boy from New Jersey […]
The rise of Il Douché and the untimely death of J.P. Barlow
On the same day Donald Trump aka Dear Leader, Il Douché, announced he wanted to throw a military parade for himself, I happened to become reacquainted with John Perry Barlow’s 25 Principles of Adult Behavior. Barlow was in the news that day due to his untimely death at age 70 and because he was a great visionary, poet and optimist. On the other hand Orange Julius Caeser was all […]
Halos around the moon
I went to the eye doctor recently because, well, I turned 65. Medicare. Time to fix all the things. Tick tock. My ophthalmologist, Dr. P, is a young man in his 30’s who tends to say “Okay then, my friend” as he holds his laptop with one hand like a tray of hors d’oeuvres and shakes mine with the other. If I had to guess, Dr. P is a […]
Babysitting Lainey: A story of courage
So Tuesday night was our first babysitting gig with our new granddaughter Lainey who was exactly one month old on Thursday. We’ve had this on the books for quite a while and during that time I’d built up a fair amount of first-time-in-32-years anxiety about it. For Sara, this would be the first time she’s changed a diaper or tried to solve the Chinese puzzle that is a onesie […]
Letters to Lainey #1
November 20, 2017 Thank god you’re finally here, Lainey. So much has happened and is happening and is about to happen. There is so much exciting news! First, the politics. Sorry. This is really boring and I hate to start with politics but I have to mention it—we used to have a mean, nasty person for a president but then we found out about you and everyone got together […]
To all those millennials I’ve judged for being addicted to their phones…nevermind.
The screen on my fetish/love object is just bigger than yours (27 inches), which means I can’t drive a car with it or use it in a crosswalk thus becoming a human weapon of mass distraction but other than that…I’m clearly just as obsessed and addicted to my device. Hello my name is James… How did I realize I’m powerless over my 27” iMac? All it took was 3 […]
