Honolulu is certainly densely packed and industrialised enough of a metropolis to create a good amount of smog, and lately we’ve been seeing an abundance of what appears to be smog, possibly more than we’ve ever had. But wait…smog? In paradise? Impossible! It would be terrible for our image to own up to that and could possibly damage the tourism industry our economy is so heavily reliant on. Hence the term “vog” (volcanic smog). It sounds exotic and has none of the negative implications that ‘smog’ alone does. Makes sense.
Vog/smog obscuring the view of Honolulu.
While I am fond of this theory because of the implications it has on the way we abuse our environment, I think it’s more realistic that a combination of vog coming in from the Big Island combined with the smog Honolulu creates is responsible for the relentless chemical bath infecting our air lately. All I’m sure of is that this isn’t healthy…nearly everyone I know has some sort of physical reaction to it, and my asthma hasn’t acted up like this in years. Maybe it’s time we start investing in oxygen tanks, because it’s starting to look like whatever this is, it’s not going to let up anytime soon.
(Note: I wrote this a year ago, and since the vog/smog has returned so heavily in the past month that humidity is almost at 100% and Honolulu-ites can barely see a hundred feet in the distance at times, I thought I would post it here.)
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a title. It’s harder than you think.
Pick Your Artist: Mogwai
Are you male or female? Batcat
Describe yourself: Kids Will Be Skeletons
How do you feel about yourserlf: I Know You Are But What Am I?
Describe where you currently live: New Paths To Helicon
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Take Me Somewhere Nice
Your favorite form of transportation: Travel Is Dangerous
Your best friend is: I Chose Horses
Your favorite color is: Acid Food
What’s the weather like: The Sun Smells Too Loud
Favorite time of day: Friend Of The Night
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Thank You Space Expert
What is life to you: Stupid Prick Gets Chased By The Police And Loses His Slut Girlfriend
What is the best advice you have to give: Boring Machines Disturbs Sleep
If you could change your name, what would it be: Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist
Your favorite food is: Secret Pint
Thought for the Day: I Can’t Remember
How I would like to die: O I Sleep
My soul’s present condition: Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home
The faults I can bear: It Would Have Happened Anyway
My motto: May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door
I saw this on the 6 o’clock local news tonight:
Pet pictures soothe economic stress.
“Pet photographer Deb McGuire of Kaneohe says there’s more to these photo shoots than meet the eye. She says she’s seeing more pet owners turning to them as an outlet from the stressed economy. In a business where time can be preserved through a lens, it appears McGuire’s work is recession-proof.”
I find this infuriating for a bunch of reasons. First of all, no matter how far you reach to try to relate this to the economy, how is this news? It’s a slow day, sure, but that’s not a good excuse for wasting a 3 minute spot on the evening news on something like a person taking pictures of peoples’ pets. That brings me to my main point: it’s a person taking pictures of peoples’ pets. And she’s not even good. For the amount she charges ($225 per photo session with a $25 charge for each additional pet…yes, the story was so absurd I decided to look up her website which is loaded with a lot of fluffy sentiment and mediocre pet portraits, some of which she made even tackier by running through Photoshop filters), you could afford to buy a good camera and take the photos yourself which would have much more personal value to you and be a more rewarding experience. How does paying someone over $200 to spend an hour photographing your pets provide any solace in today’s bad economy? You might as well have used that money to invest in the stock market or light a cigar. Or as kindle for a fire, because if you spend money this frivolously, you’re probably going to need the warmth very soon.
I know many people like this photographer. They’re not any more talented than you or I. They may or may not have any prior experience with the art form, but they spend a few hundred bucks on a nice digital SLR, practice using it and learning the settings, then go out and advertise themselves like this person has. And people are, by and large, really dumb and they like pretty things with a simple aesthetic that they’re used to. They don’t understand or bother to question why they find specific things pretty or appealing, they just DO, and that’s what fuels the commercial art and music industry. They’re also lazy and don’t realise that they could take good photos on their own without much effort at all, which is why people like this lady make a killing off of them doing something that hardly constitutes as work. Her portraiture is boring, uninspired, and could easily be reproduced by an amateur. If I had the gall to charge people the amount she is, I would actually spend time experimenting with unique and creative photos and not just set the camera’s f-stop as low as possible, aim, fire, and repeat. But then again, that’s not what most people want.
After browsing through it and keeping it in the back of my mind for a while, I finally got my own 43 Things page. The concept is fairly simple…come up with a list of forty-three things you want to accomplish in your life, share them on the site, and write about them as you map your progress. This appeals to both the habitual, obsessive-compulsive list-maker in me and also that tiny, shining ray of hope and faith I’ve managed to protect while the darkness eats away at the rest of my being. My list so far ranges from really basic short-term goals like “learn to drive” and “exercise on a regular basis” while others are a bit more challenging and hard to pinpoint exactly how I stand on, such as “practice moderation and self-control” and “be at peace with things I dislike but cannot change.”
So far I’ve come up with ten goals, but I plan on eventually making forty-three, even if some of them wind up being filler like “actually finish reading Atlas fucking Shrugged one day.” I think doing this on a site will help me better than writing it in my journal or word processor, as those I always wind up ignoring and forgetting about while this is more of an interactive and social thing for me to work with.
tris·kai·dek·a·pho·bi·a (trĭs’kī-děk’ə-fō’bē-ə)
n. An abnormal fear of the number 13.
[from Greek treiskaideka “thirteen” + -phobia “fear.”]
One of my favorite obscure words I never get to use, so I’m going to be abusing it all day, this being one of three months this year to have a Friday that lands on a 13th (which occurs only once every eleven years). Some more neat trivia on the topic here.
