The Urban Pantheist

I hate this error code so much. It beeps, too.

The snowy back yard viewed from the warmth of the kitchen.

I'm experiencing problems with my technology: The main lens I use for my camera broke (the aperture is stuck shut down to its smallest setting) so I'm making due with an old manual lens. Unfortunately the auto settings for the lens aren't reliable, and I'm stuck guessing on proper exposures. Makes me yearn for my old K-1000. Options are: 1) suck it up 2) buy a new lens 3) save up for new camera 4) wait for February when we are getting smart phones. Option 2) seems like the best, except that the flash is also busted on this camera. The whole thing feels light and flimsy, but looks "professional" enough that I can't get away with using it surreptitiously.

Also my trusty laptop has not been charging its battery for...some long time now, I forget. But I got a new battery for it which didn't solve the problem, then brought it in to the Apple store where they told me my problem was that I don't buy new computers often enough. Well, that was the attitude I detected, when the "genius" informed me that I bought the laptop in 2006. You kids can get off my lawn etc., but shouldn't something that costs four figures last six years? Options are: 1) suck it up and pretend it's a desktop computer and be very very careful about the cord because when it gets unplugged (easy, since it's one of those magnetic jobbies that costs a mint) the machine turns off 2) drop another grand on a new machine 3) re-evaluate my life and decide that I don't really need a laptop and switch to using a hand-held device full time.

Don't even bring up the car.

I predict that if this photograph survives 20 years, it will be hilariously anachronistic.

for example(s):
this

and this

Now, 40 years ago... hmmm...

One of the responsibilities of my job is to treat all of the storm drains and catch basins with mosquito larvicide (a synthetic hormone that prevents mosquito larvae from growing up into bloodsucking disease spreading adults). Every year I have to find them all, every year I surely miss some, and every year I find some new ones. Last year I got a copy of a blueprint for the zoo, so that I could create a map of the storm drains. But the blueprint is huge and unwieldy--how can I make it portable. I remembered back when I published a comic book, and I haunted reprographic places; they made blueprint-sized copies on giant machines at some of them, but they were very expensive. They basically used a big camera to take a picture...oh, right.

I realized that technology has changed in the past 18 years, and that I actually had the means to do the same thing, right there in my office. I took a series of photos with my digital camera, uploaded them and printed them. The quality isn't great, and I'll need to take some detail shots of areas of the zoo where the drains are densely packed, but I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out.

Yet another macbook cord has bit the dust. Why these things are a) so fragile and b) so expensive is beyond me. It's infuriating and puts serious stress on my brand loyalty.

EDIT: it's working again (for now...)

no good deed goes unpunished. it doesn't matter what i'm talking about, it's always true.

but let it be said that workplace communication theoretically works both ways. i would be a much better employee if i were a mind reader, but i'm merely an above-average listener with--apparently useless--good intentions.

i appear to have no working shift key, due to a second coffee spill. I STILL HAVE A CAPS LOCK, but that's not the same thing. can anything be done/

i should probably say something about charleton heston, since my review column is called 'soylent screen' and he suffered from the same disease my mother does, but i don't have much to say. it's interesting that he was in a few environmental message scifi films such as planet of the apes and soylent green, but his main legacy is being a demented mouthpiece for the nra. alzheimers' disease needs a spokesvictim from the other side of the political spectrum, though it is a dark pleasure seeing the likes of nancy reagan standing up for stem cell research, when the cold hand of reality rests on one's shoulder. republicans sure have strong principles until the controversy applies to them. anyway, thanks to you chuck, for planet of the apes, omega man, soylent green, touch of evil, in the mouth of madness, and bowling for columbine. i can't vouch for ben hur and the ten commandments, but they come highly recommended.

i'm in a bad mood that started when i started reading the chapter called 'good-bye' in 'a short history of nearly everything' this morning. this chapter is about the human-caused extinction event that started a few tens of thousands of years ago and continues at a brisk pace today, extinguishing species at a rate somewhere between 1000 and 120,000 times as dire as the average rate of extinctions. i need more time and silence to write intelligently on this, but i can feel where i'm going with this, from the point of view of someone who studies urban nature. urban species are those species that are 'compatible' [i can't escape that word] with humankind. all other species, more or less, are doomed. working at a zoo, with endangered species, it becomes clear to me that zoos are museums for the doomed species. please convince me otherwise, tell me that the conservation efforts supported by zoos and other organizations will have some effect against the juggernaut of 6 billion and counting building burning consuming and polluting.

or let's talk about movies. alexis and i watched the first half of 'no country for old men' last week, shutting it off when we needed sleep, planning to finish it later. at that moment, it was clearly a five star movie, reminiscent of coen brothers masterpieces like blood simple, raising arizona, and fargo. we'd heard from others that had already seen it that the ending was disappointing. we wondered how such a great movie could possibly be sullied by an ending. i should have remembered casino royale. right about the moment that woody harrelson appears in 'no country' you can feel it collapse. the anticlimax is when our antihero, a character who's actions we've watched in excruciating detail--we watch in what is close to real time as he dismantles a hotel room to stash an atache in an airvent--we come to realize he has died. the filmmakers decided that his death need not be seen, even though it's the most anticipated moment of the whole movie. this i suppose is meaningful in some way. i found it frustrating and infuriating. my wife and my father disagree, for reasons that as yet evade me, but make me wonder if the problem is not the film but my viewing of it. at least woody gets his pretty much when you expect/want him to get it.

are any of my bay area readers planning to watch or protest the olympic torch bus tour[questionmark]

I now have Gmail, which I'm sure will make my life richer and more fulfilling, once I'm able to use it. It seems that our computer, which seemed new and state of the art oh so recently, doesn't have the oomph. (these technical terms give me a headache.) Apparently, the solution is to buy a 140 dollar doodad that increases our computer's smarts. I'm not sure if we are jumping through this particular hoop because we use a Mac (which seems to be the computer equivalent of being a vegetarian: sure you feel better, but you can't get 90% of what everyone else is having), or if it's just part of the "put a couple hundred bucks into new computer crap" program that the computer industry is running. (Which, I assume, is borrowed from the very successful "automobile maintenance" scam that the car companies use to enslave us all.)

Consume for progress!!