Videomaker

Can't get back into the rhythm of posting regularly.  It's a little different without WiFi at my place.

Still working on my video (a collection of random clips might be a better description).  Looking at music options as well as how I might balance it with narration (or not).  Could also use some more video.

We'll see as I work on it throughout the next month, or however long it takes.


TS

Next

It took some ahootin' and some ahollerin' but I have managed to straighten out the bureaucratic overlords' snafus associated with my survival income.  Ha!

Lawd knows I screwed up enough times in my working life, but it is just as true that I always managed to feel the heat for my flaws. Trouble with the bureaucracy is the heat is non-existent.

I finally managed to get through to the masters, however.  So things appear to have returned to normal--until the next time most likely.

At the risk of sounding like I'm stealing material from Kafka, I'll probably write about it in detail some day.

On a brighter note, the football season is about to begin, and I'm making good progress--not great--on a couple of projects.


TS

More Glitz

Oregon leads the nation in overkill every year.  Doesn't seem to help on the field, does it?

The school may not have that coveted National Championship in football after a couple of close encounters over the past six years, but not even Alabama and tOSU can beat Nike U.'s trust in all things excessive and tasteless.

Call me a sports-science denier, but might I suggest this is all a load of crap?

Fortunately, one can watch a football game and be entertained while conveniently letting the idiocy surrounding the game slide, including ignoring 95% of the so-called pigskin pundits.

But hey, maybe the structure will help a future Marcus Mariota-like hero not get sacked so many times this year and avoid hurting his knees again.


TS

Rider Falls, Gets Up

I forgot I made this short piece, which I used as part of a larger private video for the family.  There is an equestrian accident that was momentarily unsettling for the cameraman. Fortunately, the rider came out of it fine as Dooley regained his equilibrium and stabilized the shot, narrowly avoiding a video disaster!


TS

Vacation is Over

Jeez, someone drew my attention to the fact that I've been pretty quiet of late.  This is my first post in a week.

Vacation is over, it is time to get back to work.  I was out in Minnesota for 17 days visiting family and when I returned some things had changed, personal income stuff, that has me all in a dither.  If you want to know the truth, I'm angry, really pissed about what is happening.

I've dropped my IP, because I can't afford the beech.  So I scour the land for hot spots now.  Presently, I write from the Portland library.

Added to that, my computer is giving me fits.  Seems to want to work on its own terms, never mind what I would like to do.

I've put together a tentative look at Charles Lucas' new work-in-progress, the long delayed "Rust: Numerous Forms of Fire."  These are photographs we first talked about publishing four years ago, right after we brought out his "Ubiquitous Serpentine," paintings on ceramic.

I'm also working on a long video project, using and tying together some of the dusty video clips I've gathered in the past 6 years.  I've made a number of short-satirical and semi-serious videos since I started this blog, but now I have so damn-much unused material that it's begging to be grafted onto something more substantial.

I'm 30 min. into to a project with the working title "A Man Walks into a Bar."

You can cover a lot of ground with a concept like that.  I feel like each clip has some significance as I've walked into a lot of bars over my time in Portland.  I was lucky to get out of a few of them, too. Sometimes I even had my cameras with me.

Contemplating the grind again, some reading I need to do, settling the financial snafu that came as a surprise and without bureaucratic warning--no need to get into how that beech works...

The pic: That's the Montana Rockies from approximately the the Blackfeet Reservation looking west toward the entry of Glacier Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area.

There's sacred shit all around there, man.  You feel it even as you ride the Empire Builder.


TS

Hedges

Con artists come in many varieties. On Wall Street, they can have Princeton University and Harvard Law School degrees, polished social skills and Italian designer suits that are priced in the tens of thousands of dollars. In Trump tower, they can have cheap comb-overs, fake tans, casinos and links with the Mafia. In the Clinton Foundation, they can wallow in hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate and foreign donors, including the most repressive governments in the world, exchanged for political favors. But they are all crooks.

The character traits of the Clintons are as despicable as those that define Trump. The Clintons have amply illustrated that they are as misogynistic and as financially corrupt as Trump. Trump is a less polished version of the Clintons. But Trump and the Clintons share the same bottomless guile, megalomania and pathological dishonesty. Racism is hardly limited to Trump. The Clintons rose to power in the Democratic Party by race-baiting, sending nonviolent drug offenders of color to prison for life, making war on “welfare queens” and being “law-and-order” Democrats. The Clintons do a better job of masking their snakelike venom, but they, like Trump, will sell anyone out.--CH

Chris Hedges telling it like it is.


TS

The Yoke's On You

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday offered her "strongest words yet against the TPP," according to one progressive organization—but whether it will be enough to convince skeptics remains to be seen.

In an economic policy speech delivered in Warren, Michigan, Clinton said her "message to every worker in Michigan and across America is this: I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages—including the Trans Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as President."--CD

She's a fraud and she's lying through her false teeth.

TS

A Real Shit Show

Two articles of note, essential reading on this Wednesday, or hump day as it is better named in the workaday world.

Mr. Norman Pollack.

Mr. Bruce E. Levine.

Read them and cry.


TS

July Was the Cruelest Month

We know we are flailing because two lousy political conventions convinced us that megalomaniacs have us surrounded. Speakers, one after another, crashed the daises in Cleveland and Philadelphia. Before our very eyes they flourished, creating grotesque, unwatchable television—C-grade horror shows produced by non-talents in the public relations industry for non-talents lusting for power, prestige, money and more power.

The connected and the vilely-proud shouted, screeched, and scolded. They said nothing of import. They bashed the other, quivered with a fear of unknowable menaces, extolled fantasies of the American Dream--TS

My piece today at CounterPunch.


TS

Crossroads Town

Roseau, MN.


TS

Fat Chance

Clinton’s best hope is to issue some sincere mea culpas and then come out with concrete, specific and comprehensive proposals to change the system, not simply nibble at the corners of the corrupted carcass—and then invite people to hold her accountable. Her entire career has been about obfuscating and equivocating, so this kind of clarity and  candor won’t come easy, but at this point it’s probably necessary if she wants to have a good shot at victory.--JA

She would rather go blind and lose both legs than waver from her hawkishness.

Ideologues seldom repent.  It's cost the GOP their Party and force-fed the rest of us a neocon in a dress--and I'm not talking Condi Rice.


TS