Our Song

If I were in a relationship with that Special Someone, this would be Our Song.



OK, or maybe this one.

Random Shots From Old Rolls - Vol. 1

In my balls to the wall transition from analog to digital photography, I'm processing old exposed rolls and exposing unexposed rolls.

Here are some random (and clumbsily punched up) shots from an old roll left in my Nikon N80 from a few years ago.

Friendships vs. Relationships

So, I posted this offhand comment on my Facebook page yesterday about how I was becoming increasingly "...convinced that having lots of cool female friends is way better than having a "girlfriend". 95% of the good, 0% of the bad."

While this isn't entirely true, it's mostly true. But that's not really the point.

The point is, a conversation ensued.

"MY BFF: lmfao!!! It's totally true.. I do way more for you than I would ever do for some scumbag boyfriend, and you are way better to me than any scumbag bastard loser fucking cock sucking prick boyfriend has ever been to me. lmfao! Apparently I'm having a day. lol

ME: This why we will always be BFFs! We take care of each other and we have each other's back!

MY BFF: Indeed we do my friend, indeed we do. See you tonight!

Sandy (old GF): He's baaaaaaaaaack

ME: LOL! I never go away, Sandy! I'm like a fucking boomerang. I might fly off on an adventure from time to time, but I always circle back to where I started. It's like a goddamn law of nature. But, you know this about me. ;-)

Sandy (old GF): Oh yes I do, that's why I love you and think of you often."

Then, after this kumbaya hug-fest among old friends, some Facebook troll dropped by and started saying this shit:

Ross wrote:

"Lots of cool girlfriends means you never find that one cool girlfriend...cant have both...shed the "female friends" and open the door to possibilities..."

Ross wrote:

"Cant have both...life is about choosing...Id love to have 2 girlfrirnds but it doesnt work that way....thats what makes them special, that there isnt all the other women around...most women who have a special man int heir life would agree...it sounds all nice and popular but it doesnt work...maybe the reason you havent found that special one is that you allow other women in your life..close friendships with the opposite sex is a form of intimacy..."

Ross wrote:

"there is a natural order of things (boundries) and one reason so many men and women are unhappy is that they fight that natural order...why do married people hang with married people...why do people seek intimacy with one person...its call intimacy...otherwise its not....you cant have a relationship with a woman or man and have all these other intimate relationships with the opposite sex..its unnatural"

Well! Needless to say, shit got ugly. My BFF went all Richmond on him, had a little "come to Jesus meeting" with him, and now he ain't so fucking "chatty" no more. In fact, he doesn't seem to even be online anymore. Deleted all of his comments and crawled back under a rock. Dayum.

But this too (although incredibly entertaining), is not the point.

The point is, I want to know your thoughts on the following question (BTW, this is asked from a 'straight' perspective...obviously a 'gay' perspective would elicit a different array of answers):

QUESTION: If you enter into a committed, intimate, long-term relationship with a member of the opposite sex (including but not limited to marriage), are you allowed to keep your close friends of the opposite sex or do you have to cut them loose in order to make your new relationship work?

Discuss.

P.S. - As a man who's closest friends are all women, including my first wife and many former girlfriends, I already know the answer to this question and am not seeking "advice". Just curious about what other people think. There are no "wrong answers".

GO!

Praying for the PM

I'm asking all of you Cheese readers and Bajans in the diaspora to continue to pray for our Prime Minister David Thompson, who is battling pancreatic cancer.

This is indeed a trying time for the nation, but especiall fro his wife and children.

May God be with them all at this time.

How Ulius Louis Amoss and the CIA Invented Terrorism & The Tea Party

"The concept of leaderless resistance was reportedly developed by Col. Ulius Louis Amoss, an alleged U.S. intelligence officer, in the early 1960s. An anti-communist, Amoss saw leaderless resistance as a backup for the possibility of a Communist seizure of the United States.

The concept was revived and popularized in an essay published by the anti-government Ku Klux Klan member Louis Beam in 1983 and again in 1992. Beam advocated leaderless resistance as a technique for white nationalists to continue the struggle against the U.S. government despite an overwhelming imbalance in power and resources. In the same year the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was formed as an eco-resistance movement.

Beam argued that conventional hierarchical pyramidal organizations are extremely dangerous for their participants, when employed in a resistance movement against government, because of the ease of disclosing the chain of command. A more workable approach would be to convince the like-minded individuals to form independent cells, without close communication between each other, but generally operating in the same direction."

The "leaderless resistance" concept was central to The Turner Diaries.

"The Turner Diaries is a novel written in 1978 by William Luther Pierce (former leader of the white Nationalist organization National Alliance) under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald". The Turner Diaries depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the United States federal government, nuclear war, and, ultimately, to a race war leading to the extermination of all Jews and non-whites. The book was called "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by The New York Times and has been labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The novel has been associated with a number of real-life violent crimes. Most notably, some have suggested that a scene depicting preparation for the bombing of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI national headquarters, served as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 by Timothy McVeigh, who had promoted the book."

This book is directly responsible for many acts of domestic crime, domestic terrorism, international terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Tea Party movement.

"The diary section ends with the protagonist flying an airplane equipped with an atomic bomb on a suicide mission to destroy The Pentagon, in order to eliminate the leadership of the remaining military government before it orders an assault to retake California."

Sound familiar?

So this "leaderless resistance" concept formulated by an American OSS operative found homes in the KKK, the Patriot Movement, and ultimately in Al-Qaeda and the Tea Party.

A Leaderless Organizations can't be defeated by conventional means. You can't kill them all. There is no leader to remove. They will never sign a Peace Treaty.

It is a distributed, autonomous tactic of asymmetric warfare fueled by a fanatic ideology.

As more and more radical ideologies embrace this clearly successful strategy, the modern concept of a civilized society becomes increasingly endangered.

We seem to be headed for a New Dark Ages where radicalism, superstition, hatred, tribalism, religion, fear, paranoia and greed are the main drivers of human interaction.

Once again we find that the greatest enemy we face was one that we created and exported.

We are, and always have been, our own worst enemy.

When we fall, we will have ourselves to blame.

Things we lost in the fire

Greetings, people. Like many Barbadians, I'm still recovering from the grief, anger and pain wrought on the entire island by the desperate, criminal act of two young products of our society.

By now I'm sure you all know about the robery and fire-bombing of clothing store Campus Trendz fire on September 3 that took the lives of six young women: Nikita Belgrave, Shana Griffitth, Kelly-Ann Lynch, Pearl Cornelius, Kellishaw Oliverre and Tiffany Harding.

Although the loss of six lives in such a cruel and senseless way is more than enough, there are many other things I feel that we Bajans have lost.

For starters, we've lost our sense of security. It will be a long time before I can feel comfortable browsing the racks of a store, especially if it's one of the tiny, one-door establishments that abound in Bridgetown.

We Bajans have a lot of precepts about a whole lot of things, and most of them erroneous. "It can't happen here"; "we don't do those kinds of things" are some of the preconceived notions that have gone out the window since September 3.

Our innocence is gone, and while one can argue that that's not necessarily a bad thing, I think that's one of the things we had going for us as a nation.

To the families of the six young women, you have my deepest sympathy.

Tomorrow Is My Birthday

And here is some shit I want. Get busy, fuckers.

James T. Kirk's Command Chair


You can buy it here.

But I want it tricked out with a D-Box SRP-130 Home Theater Motion Platform.

A Motherfucking Jumping Shark Submarine



You can buy it here.

I could see a DTV Shredder coming in handy.



Winter is coming. I could use a new pair of gloves.



I wouldn't say no to some Steampunk weaponry. Like this Goliathon 83 Infinity Beam Projector.



I think I'd cut quite a dashing figure in this complete Anakin Skywalker Jedi outfit.



And while you're at it, may as well get me the world's most powerful real-life lightsaber.


I like swords. This would be a nice addition to my collection.



And of course, hookers and blow are always a nice way to say "Happy Birthday XO!"

Get out your wallets, dust off your plastic. You have 24 hours. GO!

This Election Cycle Is Insanely Hysterical

Republicans/Conservatives/Right Wingers have been rabidly apoplectic for 2 years over the fact that an African American, Liberal Democrat was elected President, swept into power surfing a tidal wave of discontent, disgust and disapproval from a majority of the American people.

Not only did a majority of Americans vote Barack Obama into the White House, they voted Democratic candidates into control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Overwhelmingly, a majority of American Citizens told the Republicans "You suck, you fail, we're sick of you and we are kicking you the hell out of power. Get out of the way and shut the fuck up. The adults are taking charge."

But here's what's hilarious.

The Republicans/Conservatives/Right Wingers think that the reason they lost power is because they were TOO MAINSTREAM! They think they need to be more radically RIGHT WING, CONSERVATIVE and even LIBERTARIAN!

They think this is some sort of patriotic, grass roots movement fueled by outrage over Big Gummint Gone Wild.

What's sad (and hilarious) is that they are nothing more than puppets being manipulated by David and Charles Koch. The Tea Baggers are limp and mindless marionettes being manipulated by powerful men who don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about the protesters in cheap Benjamin Franklin costumes holding misspelled, racist signs.











Clearly, this is not a movement that is going to bring over the mythical "Reagan Democrat" swing voters.

This is an extreme, radical, hate-filled, far right wing fringe being manipulated by powers beyond their limited comprehension.

By embracing and electing the most extreme crazies in their party, they are sealing their own doom and consigning themselves to the trash heap of political history.

Pro Tip: When you find yourself in a hole (2008), STOP DIGGING!

Idiots.

My Last Rolls - A Preview

The Cosby Hotel has less than a month to live.

Rick Powell, the greedy douche-bag owner of the property and heir apparent to his grandparent's Powell Gardens wants to demolish the historic structure to make a quick real estate buck by creating a vacant lot at a prime location.

In response to a challenge from a professional photographer to use my transition from analog to digital photography as a creative opportunity, I embarked on a B&W photo essay to capture the historic hotel's final days.

This is just a teaser preview of the results.






















This is NOT the result of that Photo Essay. These pictures don't do the building justice. These are a toss-off of digital camera photos in their original and converted to B&W.

I took close to 100 pictures on Saturday using Old School film.

24 exposures of Ilford 100, 48 exposures of Kodak Tmax 100, all shot at 50 ISO (Thanks Dave!), and 24 exposures of Kodak 125PX shot at 64 ISO.

I expect 75% of my shots to be complete crap. If I get 25 shots worth publishing I'll consider it a day well spent.

I will scan and post the prints when they are available.