More updates on Grumpymonk

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Massively crappy day at the office. Fortunatly things improved drastically upon leaving for the day.

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Lots of pissing bums. All bums piss. They piss on the street. They piss on your car. They piss in the phone booth if they're bashful about waving their dick out in public. They piss in the gutter and in alleys and in loading docks when the trucker walks around the corner for a cup of coffee.

The city is drenched in the golden spary of thousands of bums. Water, beer, coffee, whiskey, mad dog, and soda pass through their rapidly decaying kidneys as they add their own special perfume to the rapid onset of summer.

Because they have no money we make people piss in the street and shit in the gutter. Everyone's piss and shit used to end up in the street. Now we pay large sums of money to have it washed away into the river.

Pissing in the street is a privilege awarded to bums only.

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Now using http://www.grumpymonk.com for my photo posting delight.

I'm still getting used to the interface and directory setup but I think we'll have things ironed out soon enough.

From Sunday's Subway Photo Protest

Very tired. Work has been extremely stressful and unproductive for the past two weeks but I'm almost done with the project that didn't want to go anywhere.

Set up grumpymonk.com with moveable type to create a photo blog as I just find posting photos here a bit awkward. I managed to get the instillation running on the second try and now its just a matter of figuring out how to tweak my templates and then start uploading content.

I'm just feeling that I've hit the limit with programming. I used to think I'd find some sort of personal expression throught it but I'm just not talented enough to really drive it home. At this point I'm also not that excited about writing code after working 7-10 hours a day. Not when I have other things I'd rather do.

( two more images.. )

Dear New Yorkers (especially the twat handing out copies of The Watchtower),

The next time you get offended that someone has taken your photo, keep in mind that any time you are on the subway or in any other public place you're under watch by not a few but MANY video cameras. These are owned by the police department as well as countless numbers of private corporate interests. They don't have to show you the tapes. They won't take your image off. And there's some bored fucker in a uniform laughing his ass off as pick your nose thinking no one is watching. If you kill yourself within the visual range of the military style video network of any fine public housing establishment, be assued that it will be traded to a porn website for two cartons of camel cigarettes and a order of pork fried rice from Wo-Hop within 48 hours. Hey buddy, when they said serve and protect they weren't referring to you.

At least when I take a photo I spend about 20 minutes per frame trying to make you look good.

Can you get that kinda service from the NYPD domestic spook dept? I think not.
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The protest sunday went off well and ended up attracting the NY Daily News and the NY Times which wrote short article on the issue. Our celebrity guest was Benedict J. Fernandez from the Hoboken Almanac. Try googling his name...

There's mainstream coverage here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/200589p-173051c.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/nyregion/07subway.html

Not mainstream coverage:
http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2004/06/06/photographers_to_mta_suck_it.php

Voice Contest and Article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/haber.php

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Work is really sucking.

Its 7:23 am. The cats have sucessfully gotten me out of bed by repeatedly stomping on my poor tummy until I could take no more and dressed and walked down to the corner store (closed) and then walked across grand to the nearest 24/7 bodega. There, staring at me was the gipper.

Its 7:23 am and we need a new word.

In times past the greeks gave us hubris. The most severe of offenses which would invite the wrath of the otherwise too pre-occupied in pooching each other and that damn fine shepard who was otherwise minding his own business but would sit up and take a long look at your foul shit buddy gods.

Chutzpah entered more common usage. But even this phrase has a slight tinge of rascally behavior. Sure, you want to see hot many times you can imprint the bottom of your shoe on his skull but you won't touch that grin.

For times when someone has rocked with their cock out and stood by a lie so vile it practically steams in the night air. For the times when greed shines out of a person like a love light as they stand by and tell you its for your own good. For times when official supidity has reached such heights that the papers will not report it to avoid breaking their mother's hearts.

I don't know if its just the scale of humanity these days, our economies, our wars, or our ability to hear about it but it seems that in the wake of man who brought us so much misery and inequality on previously unknown levels and told us it was not a harsh measure but a beautiful thing we just don't have the words to describe how much we, the human race, been collectively screwed by this man.

Dogs Blood Rising
Wednesday, June 9

Live PA
IGOR CUBRILOVIC returns with diverse moods from Cuba and Columbia. His sets
are a surreal journey with simple broken melodies woven into a cascade of
everyday and exotic samplesounds and electronic noise.

Guest DJ RHIZOME, founder of DUB Foundation Thursdays at The Lucky Cat,
spins Ambient Noise and Downtempo. Mid East crisis meets Far East peace
meets East Coast streets.

Resident DJs Princess Coldheart and The Narwhal mix Eclectic Folk,
Psychedelic Drones, and Esoteric favorites.

The live show starts promptly at 10:30pm.

No Cover, 10pm-4am.
$4 Wells, 18+

The Lucky Cat
245 Grand St.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

www.dogsbloodrising.org
www.theluckycat.org

Turns out there's a photographer's rights protest sunday in grand central. 1:00 pm, by the info booth in the big dark room.

http://photographersrights.mtude.com/

The MTA wants to ban all photography on the tracks. I thought that this ban had already been passed and I was pulling a sneaky sneaky by taking shots down underground.

One of Angel's friends mentioned that he had been taking photos of the links between the cars when a cop stopped him as he had been reported for being a suspected pervert pinko terrorist sort. After informing the police officer he was in fact merely a pervert pinko art student the cop grunted in satisfaction that his gut instinct had indeed been correct and waddled off.

Between this and yesterday's circle jerk of authority I'm really not in a great mood.

( two more )

Just got back from union square where I watched the department of parks and green stuff that makes people sneeze and curse attempt to confiscate the PA of a bunch of break dancers who have been regularly setting up their system in the park there for the past month and a half or so.

I say attempt as they were unsucessful until two cops showed up and took it. So there was much shouting. Then two more cops show up and there's more shouting. Then there are suddenly 12 cops including two plainsclothes officers who show up, pounce on Red Faced Shouting Man earning him his 28th arrest (only took six of them to hogtie him and cart him off), pounce on some kid (smaller than RFSM... only took four cops to hogtie and cart him off), and then face a screaming crowd of about 200 people who had previously been enjoying a free outdoor show.

Naturally I waded right into the center and stood next to four other photographers who had elbowed their way to stand two feet away from flailing Red Faced Shouting Man and Cop souffle. None of those turned out but you might seem them in the papers tomorrow as someone from the working press was there.

Homeless Man, Union Square

Remember that old romantic yarn about how no matter how far away you are from the one you love, you can both look up in the night sky and know that you're both looking at the same old moon?

Assuming you're within two or three time zones of each other.

Well, Dick Cheney is looking up at the moon too. Except he isn't thinking about his baby in a far away land.
He's thinking prime virgin real estate.

I don't know what world Dick lives in but its not a pretty one.

Chicago has followed Angel to New York.

I hold her personally responsible for the currently unseasonal temperatures and I hope you will join me in holding her accountable for being irrigated several times last night. Do you have any idea what that does to my hair?

Vanity aside, here's a photograph that's entering in my best of the year catagory:

Part of the memorial day celebrations:
http://www.stratecomm.net/~fritz/gallery/mem04/0530w

Fred Askew covers most of the protests and anti-war events in the city.

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Ton of stuff I want/need/have/might be required/am mandated/must for my survival/for the good of all right and decient thinking folk/for no paticular reason/because I would otherwise be bored/because I am a minion of the angst god/because the samoan god of love appeared to me in a vision/for no special purpose/the voices compel me to do so/to appease the demons living in my crisper drawer/for my own good/for up to no good/for the hell of it... busy basically.

Live PA
10pm SHOKO NAGAI (electric and acoustic pianos,) AL GRIFFIN (video
mixing,) and ADAM KENDALL (laptop sounds and processing.) The trio
is the intersection of vSoon, and Hellbender Film Projekt, creating
experimental, warm, improvised music and video.

11pm DREAM INTO DUST -- Acoustic folk-pop interwoven with textural
electronics.


Additional video manipulations will be provided by Adam Kendall and
Al Griffin.

DJs Abstract and Princess Coldheart fill your head with mutated
d'n'b, downtempo, ambient noise, drift, illbient, breaky post-
industrial and a few classix from the vault.

The live show starts at 10pm.

10pm - 4am
$3, 18+

The Lucky Cat
245 Grand St.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

http://www.dogsbloodrising.org

The reason I've been freaking out about prints this week is that I had to get a portfolio together to meet with the art director of Dance Magazine. Turns out we mostly went over my online portfolio anyway. Grrr....

Basically its freelance stringer work. You know, send us photos and we'll let you know if we want to buy any of them. The upside to this exchange is that I can attempt to get my camera into performances and there's a guy who can pick up the phone who's willing to identify himself as an editor and admit that he knows who I am. I think. Not sure if they'll use any of my photos or not.

Still, I'll take it as a positive step. I did get some new photoshop tips which is always useful.

I realize that if I actually want to see any sort of financial return I'd probably be better off spending $25 to get a table at the local flea market and trying to sell prints. Either that or I need to learn how to take highly detailed pictures of naked people.

Oh yes, and a brief word of advice to the hipster bands who are trying to sound ironically like bad metal hair bands from LA.

Cut that shit out.

Bad metal hair bands might have been something you heard about through the cultural grapevine but for some of us, it wasn't a few jokes on saturday night live, a pile of snark in Details magazine, and a tape you copied from a college roommate, it was the kids across the street everyone wanted to kill because the music fucking sucked and sucked even worse at 10:00 am on a sunday morning when you're trying to sleep in and all you can hear is the dropped beats of some 16 year old who's still learning how to play his xmas drum kit and the equally inept bass line of some kid who spends most of his time trying to look just like the bassist from Slayer instead of playing like him.

The suburbs were not an enjoyable place to spend the weekend. I don't need to be reminded thank you kindly.

I hate printers. I fucking hate hate hate hate printers.

I was up until 4:30 am last night trying to get a decient 8x11 print out of my Epson C82. I realize that expecting decient quality prints out of a printer that now retails for $69 is somewhat akin to expecting the pope to show up as a suprise guest soloist in the Iowa City Gay Men's Choir Summer Songfest for a tear-jerking rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Look, I did say it was 4:30 am. Expectations were high. I was half-expecting the archbishop to come by to borrow a neighborly cup of lube and some minty condoms at that point.

Its not healthy to be this sleepy. My mind swirls in a filthy mist of nuns in official Our Lady Of Hentai Voiceovers Pillow Talk Squad leather corsets and long latex skirts.

This is what catholic school does to you. Turns you into a fucking pervert. I have proof. I am proof. I have other proof too.

After looking at various printers I'm starting to realize that if I'm going to be really serious about putting out quality prints from my own home as I'm fucking subborn about everything I'd need to look at something like the Epson 4000. Even if I could afford such a device (which exceeds the value of my camera with lens and memory card included) its the size and weight of my mother's sewing machine which is capable of back-stitching a tin roof onto a teak beam without complaint.

It is a notion but a vague one at this point. I'm trying to decide if it would pay for itself or at least be worth the expense at any point.

There's also the Canon 9900 for $500 which is much more manageable but I'm somewhat nervious about hitting up against the limits of a consumer grade product and finding myself at a print shop anyway. There's also the issue of monitor calibration... another $199 or $299 for a Colorvision Spyder to make sure your colors are right.

Although I got a tip that the Adobe Color Management software works far better if you take your glasses off or just squint alot so you only look at the tones instead of the little frigging squares. Works suprisingly well too.

Yuko Kaseki @ Cave Gallery :: 5/22/2004

Found a printer in Williamsburg so I'll be stopping by there tomorrow night as tonight looks like another late night at work followed by a concert in midtown the much coffee and lots of editing. I haven't been out as much as I usually am and could use some listening time. This just means I need to get all my photo editing done by tonight. I already have 20 pressed into PSD's. Just need to go back and pull out the originals from my earlier dance galleries and redo them.

This has been a lesson in why I need to have a workflow. When I edit photos I typically just ditch the changes by closing the photoshop PSD file without saving. Naturally it never occurred to me that I might need a print at some point. Now its download files. Burn gallery onto CD. Edit file. Save PSD into editing directory. Burn PSD's onto CD. Archive. Archive. Archive.

Christ... just realized I made a series of stupid bugs in my ADO.NET queries. For all the craptastic featureality that microsoft usually pushes into its products, I have to say that Visual Studio .NET actually has some very redeeming features.

Lower East Side

Pretty out of it. Lots of work for this week. Day job and otherwise.

Need to get my dance portfolio in shape by friday. Are 8.5x11 inkjet printouts sufficient for a photo portfolio? Or should I spend the dough and get a couple of obscenely expensive 11x16's made? This is for performance, not landscapes so I think I should be ok but I don't know what's generally expected.

Live PA
10pm SHOKO NAGAI (electric and acoustic pianos,) AL GRIFFIN (video
mixing,) and ADAM KENDALL (laptop sounds and processing.) The trio
is the intersection of vSoon, and Hellbender Film Projekt, creating
experimental, warm, improvised music and video.

11pm DREAM INTO DUST -- Acoustic folk-pop interwoven with textural
electronics.


Additional video manipulations will be provided by Adam Kendall and
Al Griffin.

DJs Abstract and Princess Coldheart fill your head with mutated
d'n'b, downtempo, ambient noise, drift, illbient, breaky post-
industrial and a few classix from the vault.

The live show starts at 10pm.

10pm - 4am
$3, 18+

The Lucky Cat
245 Grand St.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

http://www.dogsbloodrising.org

So, yes. I write from my lovely window office in the chelsea marketplace this monday morning. The window is actually a glass patio door. That's locked. And leads to a rectangular section of steel roofing with a pool of sunlight at the far end. I can see the shaft of pale whilte light streaming down like divine love. On the other side of a grout stained window and obscured by a filthy non-union laborer who's currently scratching his nuts.

In times past I would see this as a metaphor for my life.

Now I just see it as a minor annoyance. I'd really prefer no window to a half-assed window. The windows of my youth looked out upon rolling hills of cactus, sun-burned fragrant desert shrubs, tall grass, and an elm tree with a shocking lust for height. Other windows show me the manhattan skyline, chipmunk chomping cats frolicking on the grass, a magnolia tree in full bloom, and even an air shaft very much like the one in A Thousand Clowns. Windows a grey cat will balance on the radiator to reach. Its furry little head stretched out, nose twitching as a breeze brings in news of the outside world.

This is a window that works in a gas station to support its huffing habit.

This window's father is dosen't like to talk about it. It just shakes it head and reaches for another budweiser. Maybe it came from a broken home but it didn't need to do that.

People wonder what the hell is this window's problem.

This is a window heading for a bad end.

My heart is elsewhere. In a fluttering place. The window will have to face its own fate.

I am thinking of other things.

And not necessarily about a custom string tokenizer class either...

Union Square: 5/20

Attempting the pushed look. Upped the contrast by 30 points and then threw a channel mixer monochromatic layer on top. Works pretty well. Next trick is duotones.

Really tired at the moment and looking at the amount of work I need to be doing. Incredible amounts of photo editing. Already did three design comps for one site, need to do a few for another, need to update my photo site, grumpymonk has been completely neglected, probably tear that down and rebuild it, need to redo angel's for better usability. Plus I'm going in saturday to put in a few hours at the day job. I've already been told I can get as much overtime as I want. Not all that thrilled about the prospect but at least I'll get paid for what I work.

Feeling out of touch with people again. Trying to balance day job vs. photos vs. freelance vs. keeping in touch vs. going out vs. taking care of myself vs. lookin' for luv vs. giving the cats luv vs. sleep.

I think I need to start playing the lottery.

Money, it won't make you happy but if you have enough you get to sleep in.

( another photo )