My newfound custom of getting up early continued on Sunday, and with that, I got a shit ton of stuff done, including baking some crispy, crunchy toasted homemade muffin bread and installing an Ortleib bag bracket on the Fattishson (The Roscoe’s current name before it becomes a 29er in the future).
Then I decided to ride.
Saturday had no Saturday feel. Why, you ask? No footy to watch. Sure, there was World Cup Qualifying, but no game really spoke to me, and other than the England squad, footy on the world stage lacks the drama and top-class screenwriting of the Premier League; from the BIG 6 all the way down to the bottom three fighting for survival due to the beauty of Promotion/Relegation. Sigh.
So, with a so-called “Saturday” at my disposal, I returned to the Forest Hill Nature Area with my Nikon Z6 camera, a 500mm 600mm lens, a vintage macro lens, and Wifey.
For some reason, I was up at 6:15 on Tuesday morning. I really don’t know why; all I know is that the longer I laid there, the more I thought about other, more constructive things I could be doing. That’s quite a change from two months ago when I was on the cusp of filling out my application to be a professional bed layer. A position I feel I would have excelled at!
I’d like to give big props to the O.G. Mindbender and Mindbender II (The Wrath of Kahn) for getting me out of bed and back feeling like myself again.
Imagine, if you will, the opening credit montage of an early 1990’s British crime series on BBC America. I, the unassuming sheep farmer/pub-goer turned amateur photographer/mystery sleuth, make my way across the green moors of the English countryside with a jaunty spring in my step and a small film camera around my neck as my rambunctious border collie runs ahead doing border collie type stuff. I stop and look out at the rolling green hills in front of me; the camera pans the scene in my gaze before zooming in on my face and a twinkle in my all-knowing sleuthly eye as I light my pipe filled with 100% legal in the State of Michigan kush tobacco and then take a photo with my little jank camera.
Now imagine that absolutely none of that happened.
Note: This is the last SIT. It was a dumb idea, sort of. The pics will now be in Soiled Fotos portfolio under Random.
Life Mission: Art my way through the mundane.
Also, eat yummy food!
Back about five years ago, I had a Nikon D7100 DX camera, and for reasons that I can’t remember, I sold it. I THINK it was because I started getting into the Fuji X System and thought I would switch to full-on Fuji. As it turns out, I sold all my Fuji gear and went all-in on Nikon Full Frame. Going the opposite direction of most photographers and crap picture takers such as myself.
Life Mission: Art my way through the mundane.
I never promised you a rose garden. Or compelling images as part of the Soiled Image Tip series, and goddamn it, I am delivering on those non-partisan non-promises!
This post falls under if you give a person who likes taking photos (I’m hesitant to use the term photographer when referring to myself) a camera, they will take photos of it, no matter how mundane the task, and ain’t nothin’ more mundane than what I do on a Saturday night (for the record most of Saturday night, I thought it was Friday, Tuesday, or Sunday).
MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)1
“Here, take this. It’s a mixture of horse placenta, baby spit, and the toenail of a sodomized goat, manufactured in the basement of a New Jersey pharmaceutical company/suburban home.”
ME
“Will it slow my metabolism down even further and cause me to gain even more weight like all the other shit has?”
MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)
“No, no, it was weight neutral in trials; it will just help with your want to leave the house. And who knows, it might even get you back on your bike or in the woods with your camera. Trade: Phenodihydrochloride benzelex. Street: The embalmer”
ME
“Balls. I’ll swallow it and run a mile.”
Me grabs handful of colorful pills and shoves them down his throat.
MINDBENDER II (THE WRATH OF KHAN)
“Not those pills, THESE pills, those are my M&Ms, you stupid nipple. By the way, you still owe your $30 copay from our last session.”
Me proceeds to write a check with milk chocolate—now freed from its hard, colorful candy shell— smeared across his chubby face.
ME
“What’s today’s date again?”2
— SCENE —
“Blinded by the light,
Woke up like a douche1 in the middle of the night.”
— Blinded by The Light, by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
After days, nay weeks, of being a morbidly obese, mentally drained housebound hermit, I ventured out into the world on Friday morning for a snowshoe at the Forest Hill Nature Area. Hooray for being a functioning adult.
