Cool Camera

So, I went to Fujifilm.com today to see if they still produce the film that I wish to use for the Color Fest in March, and I discovered that they have been the first to think of something I have been wishing for for several years now.

The coolest looking digital camera yet:


Now, it isn't quite the camera I want to buy. For instance, it does not have a full frame digital sensor. This camera is obviously aimed at the pro-sumer market of retro tech-geeks, but there are good reasons why I wish that I could get something like this.

In my experience, I have found that people are super impressed when you carry around a huge, 15 pound monstrosity of a camera with all kinds of atavistic bells, whistles, attachments, and a ginormous, phallic lens. People say, "Wow! That is a nice camera. How did you afford that?" But, besides being a pain in the rear for the photographer to deal with, I also find that people get terribly intimidated when they find themselves in front of that beast.

On the other hand, if I point my humble Nikon FM at them:


They let their guard down. They don't take it quite as seriously, maybe. They say things like, "You have to know what you're doing to use a camera like that." They give you some sort of benefit of the doubt. Therefore it is a lot easier to take their picture when your ridiculous camera is not getting in the way.

Furthermore, most of that expensive camera is dedicated to doing tasks that a camera doesn't really need to do, like color balance, and creating histograms, and other esoteric nonsense that can be taken care of with computers, photoshop, etc. And that is why I have wished that Nikon would release a Nikon FM-Dslr. In a perfect world it would use the minimum necessary electronics to capture and store a Nikon Raw image file with a full frame sensor. It wouldn't even need to have a view screen on the back. I could do without that. It would have a knob on top for the shutter speed, and ISO, and would accomodate all Nikon manual lenses, therefore removing the need for aperture adjustment, and auto-focus mechanisms in the camera body.

It would have absolutely no automatic settings, except maybe a TTL flash setting. It would be the first fully manual, stripped down, professional DSLR on the market. It would sell exceptionally well to pro-sumer retro geeks, and me. It would be awesome.

Terrence Malick

Oh, Terrence Malick, has it been so long?



I think this is just what I need.

The Spirit

Being raised in the LDS faith, I was brought up to believe that the Spirit of God would manifest itself by a "burning in my bosom"; that if I was faithful, and obedient to the laws of God I would come to know the truth. But this never happened to me. In my 18 years of going to church, reading the scriptures, and praying, I never felt anything good. At best I felt bored. At worst I felt a complete emptiness, and a growing sense of inadequacy. I was told that I was not ready for the answers. I was told that I didn't want the true answers. It was always my fault, and for a long time I believed it.

But as a skeptic I find that I really do want to believe. Nothing would make me happier than for God to show up as a burning bush and tell me what I'm supposed to do. People have accused me of believing in nothing. I don't agree with that. I do believe very firmly in things. I just can not believe it anything based on absolutely nothing.

Of course, there came a time when my mind began to rebel against those notions. I came to believe that there were two obvious explanations why I could find no faith within myself:

A) It's all bullcrap

or

B) God hates me

Both of those answers are equally appealing at various times. But they mostly made me feel angry for a very long time. Particularly, I felt a deep, and burning rage for everyone who ever told me that if I would just pray more sincerely then I would find the answers I sought.

Eventually I did kind of get over it. While the beliefs I was raised by will never go away, I found a way to get enough space between me and them that I could reflect on what I believed and felt in my own heart. After all, why should a person be tied down to experience things the way that everyone else does? I began to seek experiences of a different sort. I wanted to get to know myself better.

I asked myself, why would God hide himself so completely from us if the very purpose of our existence was to believe in Him? It's not logical. I'm pretty sure that God has never spoken to me, at least in the sense that believers say he does. I'm inclined to believe that there is a God. It seems more unreasonable to me to think there is not. But he remains silent, detached, abstract. I decided it was futile to try to know God before you even know yourself. And I firmly believe that a life spent entirely on knowing yourself would be a life well spent, and a busy one at that.

As I began to be better at following my own heart, and my own desires, I have gained far more than I ever gained in church. I will risk my very soul on the truth of that statement. I know in my heart that if I had done what others wanted me to do, if I had gone on a mission for instance, it would have been a sort of spiritual death for me, because I know there was absolutely no desire in me to do that, and if I had it would not have been for me, nor would it have been for God.

In spite of my great heresy, I have often felt something that could be interpreted as "The Spirit". I often felt it while racing over high mountain-tops on my bike in those crazy years. It was a sense of being more deeply alive. It was a feeling of great power, and great weakness at the same time. It was a sort of liberation from the trappings of the mind when I could become a purely physical being.

Later I would feel it while exploring the rarely seen parts of the Buddhist Temple in Taiwan. It was a feeling of great humility, and yet a sense that I was playing a small part in everything. In one room in particular, I felt a deep connection with the entire world, and I knew that I was so small as to be almost nothing at all, but somehow I was still vitally important in spite of my obsolescence.

I have felt this Spirit when looking at great works of art, and sometimes not so great works of art. I once felt it while looking at a segment of Roman sidewalk at the UMFA. I feel it at the Spiral Jetty every time I go there, or in Moab. It manifests itself in a sense that there is something valuable in the pure experience of this life itself. It doesn't matter what you do. It's just important that whatever you do you experience it as fully as you can. It's vitally important to be open to whatever comes your way. These are some of the things I began to believe.

We spend so much of our lives trying to be somewhere else, it is rare to find yourself capable of being right here, and right now. I find I can do this more easily in bizarre, and remote places. I have felt most at peace with the world while floating down the Colorado River, staring up in wide-eyed wonder at the blood-red cliffs above. I feel something beautiful and mysterious while driving at high speeds across the empty salt flats of western Utah. I have spend hours upon hours staring at the Great Salt Lake and not even needing to ask questions about it.

In Iceland I felt the full weight of existence bearing down upon me, and for a while I even embraced it before it got too heavy. I learned on that trip that not all spiritual experiences need to be warm and fuzzy. Sometimes what your soul needs is to find the darkness for a little while. I felt things within myself that I have never spoken of, and perhaps never will, but I still wake up in the night sometimes thinking I am still there. It was a very dark time that I will always cherish. I learned more about myself in the darkness than I ever learned in the light.

On the other hand, I have walked in the light as well.

At places like the Holi festival I have been filled with the feeling that life is good, and worth living in spite of all of it. Sometimes a person just needs an excuse to let go of all the crap and party hard.

My wedding really was my happiest day. On that day, unlike any other day, I felt completely as though I was exactly where I was supposed to be, among all the right people, doing all the right things. I had absolutely no doubts in my mind, no more questions to answer for a little while.

As time goes by I get closer and closer to this spirit. I feel I understand it more and more. I would not be so arrogant to claim that it was God speaking to me. Maybe it is just a part of my own soul recognizing true beauty when it sees it in all it's light, and dark mystery. But I do know absolutely that I do have a soul. I know that I am so much more than random particles in space. I know that this life is far more than a simple test of loyalty and obedience. I feel it growing more and more every day. I feel it when I look in Rachel's eyes. I feel it when I read a great book. I sometimes now can even feel it when I'm just lying in bed on a Saturday morning, doing nothing at all.

I know it was always there, but I have only become better at knowing it when I see it. And I try to live by those beliefs that I have found. I strive to be better at living in the moment and letting the good and bad happen, and just feel alive amidst it all. We are here to experience, and anything that tries to cut you out from the experience of life is evil, and must be fought hard.

"Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night."
- - - Dylan Thomas

Valentine's Day

Let me begin by saying that Valentine's Day is much better when you are married than when you are merely dating. At least it feels that way to me. I think I understand it better. I could never figure out why everyone ran out to pay lots of money for flowers that are going to die next week, and chocolate wrapped in pretty, heart-shaped packages that will be thrown away tomorrow, and all that other cheesy stuff. I never felt there was any true romance in a box of petrified, tooth-chipping hearts with lines like "Kiss me", and "lol" written on them. I always thought, and still do really, that Valentine's Day was created by greeting card companies. But it does serve a good purpose when you can get beyond all the fluff.

In the dating world, I always felt that Valentine's Day was the day that all the girls get out their measuring sticks and compare whose boyfriends are the sweetest. I shouldn't be surprising anyone if I say that most guys couldn't care less about any of that sweet stuff. They just don't want to be in the doghouse. Furthermore, I have always been the first to criticize the over-the-top Valentine's mentality because a good person should always be striving to make their significant other feel special and loved. I know I am always trying to do just that, even though I sometimes fail.

Valentine's can be extremely stressful in the beginning of a relationship. Society puts so much pressure on it that it can easily make or break a couple's chances. A guy can easily get lost among all the cheese. Who can ever know just how much cheese is appropriate to the stage of the relationship he might be in. As easy as it is to do too little and look like a jerk, there is also great danger of going too far and looking like an idiot. It's a precarious balance, a high-wire act between confidence and desperation. Fortunately, once you are married you should know the person you are married to well enough to know what the rules are.

Once you are married you find that all the fluffy stuff doesn't matter any more. And I find that I really don't care what anyone else thinks about my relationship. So go ahead and measure away ladies. This was the first time where I felt truly able to appreciate Valentine's day, and the opportunity it gives to have our very own day. It's easy to get caught up in the current of life and forget to let your wife know just how special she is. I find that to be true even this early in marriage.

I love my wife very much, and never want to take her for granted. I want her to always feel special. So this year I looked at Valentine's as an opportunity to do something extra special, just for her. And that's what I did. And it was a great Valentine's Day. If you want to know all the things I did, I'm sure she will tell you all about it. I never like tooting my own horn too much, and She will probably describe it better than I anyway.

But I must also say Thank You to her for making me feel extra special, and sexy in ways I won't get into here. She also got me some really awesome presents. For instance, she got me this most excellent gela-skin for my Kindle:



I have been needing to make that Kindle (which she also gave me for Christmas) all mine, and some Vintage Dr. Gonzo will do the job nicely. It also goes perfectly with the giant Hard-Cover edition of The Curse of Lono by Hunter S. Thomson, with full size illustrations by Ralph Steadman. I have been needing this book for a very long time:







Yeah, that's how my wife rolls. She will buy me overpriced books with crude illustrations that she might never understand, but she knows I love them and gives them to me anyway. That's some love there.

Love you, love you, love you, Rachel.

The Work Situation

The last few months I have felt as though I was engaged in an epic battle against a life of indentured servitude to the man. For 11.5 years now I have grunted, and sweated my life away to move all of your packages in a never-ending game of Tetris. I never really minded it for most of that time. It really isn't a bad job. It could be much worse anyway. For reasons that are too complex to explain any more, I was always content to stay in my safe position. It seemed like the right thing to do. And I always felt I could escape at any time I wished. No one told me that the Recession was coming.

So then, when I found myself feeling less content with my station in life, I found that there was nowhere else to go. Nobody has been promoted within the giant corporation I work for in quite some time. As people start to retire, or leave the company, those positions are not filled. Cut backs have been the buzz word around town. Nevertheless, I was determined to squeeze my way up the ladder, and this is how it has progressed:

Last fall, the Human Resources manager informed me that they had lost the paperwork documenting my qualification to be a driver. Therefore, I would have to take the class again. Why not? I queried. It's forty hours of paid training to sit in a room and do nothing but watch videos. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I do get bored quite easily, but I will never say no to getting paid to be bored. So I did it.

Once I became re-certified to be a driver, I was returned to my regular job of playing extreme tetris, for a guaranteed 17.5 hours a week. I continued to harass the human resources personnel to make sure my paperwork was not lost again. I also continued to harass the Wasatch management about whether or not they were going to need utility drivers for the christmas season. They kept on telling me that it would happen soon.

Meanwhile, I applied for 2 full-time openings that appeared on the communal bulletin boards.

Sometime right after Thanksgiving, I received a call from the Wasatch Center informing me that I was to be immediately trained on the road. It would seem, to use old man Rob's terminology, that I was about to be given my very own starship. I was elated, and equally terrified. Everyone started coming out of the woodwork to tell me that it had been nice knowing me, and that they thought I was very stupid, but it was my funeral.

Let me digress to explain something about the attitude of UPS "hub rats". Although UPS drivers get paid substantially more than employees of the hub, and get to work during the daytime, and get to see the sunlight, and get to talk to real people, and don't have several supervisors literally breathing down their neck every moment of working time, and get treated generally with respect, It is the belief of most hub rats that being a driver is so completely horrifying that it is better to work double shifts in the black of night for half the pay. The hub is filled with horror stories of what will happen to you if you dare to leave behind your rusty cage and strive for something better. It is noble to stay down there at the bottom where you have no real responsibility.

So I was apprehensive about it. I had been listening to this propaganda for more than 11 years. Nevertheless, I could not stand the thought of another year down in that cesspool of humanity.

By the time I started training to drive I got a call from Human Resources informing me that I had won the bid for a full-time hub job. I told the Wasatch management and they said they would convince the hub to let me stay on as a utility driver until Christmas so that they wouldn't have to start training someone else.

For two of the most grueling days of my life I was trained in Park City. I don't want to talk about that. But then I was put on what would be my utility route for the remainder of the peak season: Cottonwood Heights. The first couple of days of that did not go smoothly, but my mind was working on solutions to my hundreds of daily problems. The next day I would do things a little differently, a little faster. Pretty soon I knew exactly where I needed to be all the time, and I was getting done early. And just as it was getting really good, they assigned me a driver helper. Pretty soon, I was letting him do all the grunt work, while I was spending my time organizing and figuring out how to get everything done even faster. It was beautiful.

I would come back to the hub with my empty truck, long before I needed to be there. The management would scratch their heads and wonder why I could figure it out so easily, and the other utility drivers could not. I got my ass severely kissed on several occasions. It seems that if you do your job as a driver, people like you for it. In the hub, a person who does their job is merely given another job to do on top of the first one. Those who do not do their jobs, on the other hand, are given an easier job.

Alas, Christmas arrived, my loyal helper Jake and I said our tearful farewells after all that we had seen, and it was back to the hub for me. The Wasatch people begged me to stay on Utility. I told them I could not do that because Utility gets no work after New Year's. And although I hated the hub more than ever, after my 4 week escape, I need the guaranteed 40 hours that my new full-time job would afford me.

The bitter hub rats were immediately all over me to tell me how stupid I was once again. They informed me that if I took the full-time gig I wouldn't be able to go driving for a year, and I would screw myself all around. I should just be smart and stay part-time yet again, like a good hub rat. I was vexed. I consulted the union people. They told me the same thing. Now I was very vexed, but I tend to distrust the union, so I initiated a nearly two week, epic struggle to get answers from the human resources. The human resources people are slow to tell you anything, but they never lie. Eventually I found out from them that everyone else was full of bull, and if I officially accepted the full-time position I could still become a driver the very next day if a position became available.

Let me digress again to explain something about unions. They are completely retarded, and will constantly tell you that they are there for you, even while they beat you over the head with a club, steal all your money, and your clothes. Then they will leave you to die on the side of the road, and when you manage to survive they will come back and tell you that it's the management that screwed you over in the first place, and ask you to give them more money. I have always been treated fairly by UPS. I can't say the same about the union. They have never done anything for me as far as I can tell. The signature at the bottom of my paycheck is not Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

So I became full-time. Thus began an epic game of musical jobs. The first day I was told I was doing the same job I always did: pink belt loader. A couple of days later I was told I was the pink belt irreg sweep. Then I became the west wall irreg sweep. Then I became a blue belt loader. Then I became the west wall sweep. Then I became the purple belt sweep. Then I became the irreg belt sweep. Then I became officially a member of the irreg belt, but spent most nights sweeping the west wall anyway. Some days I was told I didn't really have a job, and I should just "look busy", which is not as easy as you might think. I spent some good time playing solitaire on my phone in the restroom on a couple of nights. Then they certified me to pull the irreg trains, and that pretty much brings us up to the current situation.

Being a full-time hub rat is the worst job I have ever experienced. That's the short version of the story. I hate it every minute. I pass the time by thinking evil thoughts, and conspiring in the shadows with other dark minions. Every day I feel I become weaker, and more mean-spirited. The full-time jobs are known as "combo" jobs, but are often referred to in the hub as "combo douches". The irreg people are often known as "irreg douches". Therefore, I find myself slowly becoming an "Irreg Combo Double Douche". That is my title. I survive it only because I know it is temporary. Eventually I will escape to become a driver for good. I am not afraid because I have been there and seen the truth. Being a driver is awesome. Being a hub rat is merely willing yourself to a minimal standard of living. I should have figured that out 11 years ago. But in any case, I'm ready to go now. I now resume my constant harassment of the management on a whole new level to make sure they do not forget that I am waiting. My vampire days are over. There is a cure.

As the good doctor said, "At the top of the mountain, we are all Snow Leopards".