U.S. Soldiers Bathroom Graffiti March 27, 2008
Posted by Phineas in : Photos, Political/Editorial , add a commentSteve Featherstone reports on bathroom graffiti on bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
( link )
Fausse 2007 November 12, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Alcohol, Environment, Irrelevant, Music, Outdoors/Travel, Photos, Wild Animals , 1 comment so far 
Lake Fausse 2007 Wrap up:
Gators? Check.
Pelicans/herons/loons, etc? Check.
Varmits? Check.
Paddlefish? Check.
Turtles? Check.
Lizards? Check.
Owls? Check.
Midnight kayaking into the infinity? Check.
Blazing constellations? Check.
Orion pursuing the Pleiades? Check.
Shooting stars? Check.
Copious quantities of expensive beer? Check.
Rock and Roll? Check.
All parties present and accounted for? This was our main failing this year, as the Arcturus was with us only in song.
Saints victorious over the winless Rams? Not so much.
Musicological/sociological experiment? Isolate four drunk middle-aged men away from their googles, wikis and twitters but with the entire Pink Floyd music collection on MP3 (no credits) and pose the question: Who sang what? David Gilmour or Roger Waters? Song by song/line by line. (Why is this hard? Listen to “Mother” from the Wall album. Consider: Waters sometimes sounds like Gilmour, but other times sounds like no one else.)
Photos? Check.
Videos? Check.
Bagged Glacier Point October 22, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Environment, Irrelevant, Lies, Outdoors/Travel, Photos, Psycho/Spirit, Wild Animals , add a commentThis weekend I bagged Glacier Point. By “bagged” of course I mean I rode the bus up to the top and hiked down the four mile trail.
[ Earlier this summer, Terry and I bagged Mt. Hoffman. We were on a seven day high country loop and we stayed at the May lake High Sierra Camp on day 4. The evening after dinner, many of the campers were hanging out on a ridge watching the sunset, sipping hot cocoa. I was completely fatigued, and although hiking to the summit of Mt. Hoffman was on the itinerary for the next morning, I was secretly thinking I might not make it. Terry later revealed that he was also feeling a little intimidated by that peak, given how exhausted he was feeling. This guy was standing nearby with his party, a little older than us I think. He was staring longingly at the summit and said, "There's another peak I'd like to bag." After a short pause, his wife lets him off the hook saying, "Yeah, but maybe on another trip." "Yeah," the dude says. I wonder how many other peaks he'd like to "bag", but doesn't. Why would he say it, but not do it? It's like a 2-3 hour hike up from May Lake, and we're all staying the night there. If you're ever going to "bag" it, now would be the right time. By claiming to want to but being let off the hook like that, it's almost like he gets credit without actually earning it. Kind of annoyed me. So Terry and I the next morning felt a lot better and decided not to be that guy, and went ahead and did the hike. Mt. Hoffman is in the bag.]
October is a wonderful month to go to Yosemite. There are lots of fall colors going on — yellow maples and red dogwoods. Even the evergreens were browning (I guess from the drought). The temps were cool and comfortable. There are no crowds. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles of trails in Yosemite, although my least favorites are the valley ones. I’m not a big fan of staircase switchbacks, whether up or down. But I only had a few free hours (we took some out of town guests up for a quick visit and they weren’t hikers). I had never done this trail so it seemed like a good candidate for a quickee.
Glacier Point is such an awesome view. I love being high up like that. The Valley is cool, but I prefer looking down on it than up from it. And I loved seeing all the peaks I really did “bag” (hopefully this term will become meaningless soon): Half Dome, Cloud’s Rest, Sunrise Mountain, Mt. Hoffman. I did not bag Echo Peaks, but I sort of humped it once. I took some sunset shots the evening prior and now got some morning video before slogging down the trail.
No bears, although a big grey squirrel scared me.
After the week I had workwise, Yosemite is such fantastic therapy.
Yose Pix April 14, 2007
Posted by Phineas in : Outdoors/Travel, Photos , add a commentNo, I’m not cracking up. Please disregard that last post.
Here are some pix from Yosemite from this past week:
There Are Many Here Among Us Who Feel That Life Is A Joke June 4, 2006
Posted by Phineas in : Photos , add a comment
These are photos I took at a concert in Hattiesburg, MS, in November 1982. To get in, my friend Ron and I decided we didn’t need no stinkin’ tickets. We devised a brilliant plan to cheat Cheap Trick out of the outrageous $7. The concert was held at the coliseum on the USM campus, which during the day was an open facility for students (gyms and some campus offices). So we decided to just saunter in in the late afternoon and then hide while they locked it down in preparation for the concert. So we hid out in the toilets for many, many hours (time was cheap — $7 was hard to come by!). When we heard crowd noises we waltzed out into the main arena whistling Dixie. It was quite a while longer before it seemed like a regular concert sized crowd. But finally, we were rewarded with free rock and roll. I snapped these shots during the show. I’m sure I have more somewhere if I could only find the negatives! These are scans. I’m neither a great photographer nor a great scanning artist, so this is just for the record. After the show, we hung around even longer while the audience cleared out. When it was nearly empty, the band came out and actually helped the roadies break down the gear. Ron chatted up Robin (no pix of that, sadly) and then we finally left, getting more than our money’s worth out of that show.
Paranoid in Bahrain
Posted by Phineas in : Photos , add a comment
Shot of me feeling paranoid in Bahrain. From 1989. I had no specific reason to feel paranoid, but that was a hard year. I was teaching English in Saudi Arabia, and this trip over the bridge from Damman to Bahrain was meant to be like a party weekend, because you could legally drink alcohol in Bahrain. But it was no spring break either, and the girls were far from gone wild.
Ken and David, Brooklyn, 1995
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Just some foolin around w/ long exposure settings on my old Pentax K-1000. Nice moody image of Ken’s Brooklyn apartment in Greenpoint (from around 1995)
