Zzzzzzzz...

I'm dozing and clock-watching as I hold fast to my promise of only adding another polaroid after the previous polaroid posting reaches 50 views (the sad bird is currently at 40 [as of 4/3/07]). I have one all lined up that will hopefully be a handy illustration of My Day With The IRS (working title), which might not have been as bad as I had forseen (knock wood).

That's a lot of parentheticals.

Where We're From, The Birds Sing A Pretty Song

Subtitled: Emo Bird Is Emo



Today, sharing images with you brings me no joy, and I think my dead-bird friend here kind of says it all.

I'm getting audited and as much as I'd like to play it off as another life experience, it's a very lonely feeling right now, especially since they're asking for info from 2005 which I don't really have in any sort of complete form, and there's a big chunk of change that they're curious about that I have no documentation on AT ALL. I certainly won't have it by Monday (which is Opening Day, the first day of Spring). The numbers that we're talking about in terms of money are sort of nebulous to me and I have no cotton-pickin' idea why they'd want to audit me to begin with, short of 2005 being the first year I actually rose above the poverty line.

I've been asked by my friends, who are fearful of the same thing happening to them, to take good notes ... So in short terms, let this be a lesson to you, kiddies: keep EVERYTHING. One of my head-slapping moments was realizing that I had shredded 2005's phone bills literally 12 hours before the audit summons arrived in the mail. That said, they say to keep this sort of shit for 7 years. There isn't that much space in my universe.

Far Away, Where We Might Laugh Again

I'm going to experiment again with product distribution and limit posting more of these until the one before reaches 50 Flickr hits. In previous instances I had spammed the sweetholyfuck out of some of the groups (10-15 at a time, or as many as they would allow) and it seems to have limited exposure -- once they drop off the facing page, the less likely they are to be viewed, etc.. The next experiment will involve dropping one onto Flickr with a route back to this site where I host the rest of the group exclusively.

VOTING CLOSED, VICTORY DECLARED

For those of you who would claim to have lost faith in the democratic system, please hold the results of Richard's First Vote close to heart as an example of the virgin-pure system this country holds dear. As I collect a steady trickle of images to shower upon you as one collects rain in a cistern to drink in the summer, please take the time to consider this token of my appreciation,



A new car!

Obsession Leads to Compulsion

WHO



ARE



YOU?



Thoughts on marketing:

There's more of those on Flickr, of course. I had originally thought that the Flickr site would draw more hits to the Official Richard Gin Site and the Official Richard Gin Blog (I Fall To Pieces) and it has, to a point, but not in any sort of impressive way. I think it takes a certain kind of person/Flickrwonk to bother to check in the profile page to find the link here and I may have to re-think my posting strategy. In a way, I'm more interested to see who finds this site directly, rather than those who make the trip over from the Flickr halfway house.

All the same, I would like to extend a warm hello to visitors from the UAE and United Kingdom who have come here.

"Another Act of Cosmic Chance"

I made you a diptych. It hints at questions waiting to be answered.

It's Great To Be Alive

A grand day out at the American Museum Of Natural History results in me spending hours loading Polaroids to Flickr. I didn't think I liked the un-color-corrected Type 89, but I guess I do after all. Especially this,



Anyway, ducks and cats and dogs and fossils and other mammals abound in Richard's Menagerie.

Listening to Drive By Truckers, A World of Hurt

If you still think about each other and smile before you remember how screwed up it's gotten
Or maybe dream of a time less rotten
Remember, it ain't too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into it with everything you got

SUNY Purchase

I was up in Purchase (so sayeth the title) today to do some stuff for Pepsi Corporate and had lunch with Cameraman D. (dry personality, like mine, and all around good guy). We talked about this and that like most of us do when we've nothing to do before working and I snapped this one off. Of course, the Polaroid back is always a conversation starter and so we chatted about that for a while. I told him the reason I brought it out was because of the warm weather and how the emulsion was freezing the last time I tried to shoot with it and got into the particulars of shooting with something with no viewfinder and how the tendency leans toward centering the subject. I also told him that I didn't want to become one of those photographers who's nothing more than an advanced amateur.

On the way back I stole this on the West Side Highway.

Animals, Animals, Animals

When I first got my Holgaroid (after much searching and hand wringing and research as to whether the stock would be discontinued* or whether I could even find one in the tri-state area), my first thought was, "OMG NOW I CAN MAKE ART BLABLAZOOBOYYARLYNOWAI!" which I think is a fine attitude to take with something like this. Of course, having not had a darkroom since college, any sort of immediate gratification when it comes to appreciating your own crapulence is... appreciated. Plus I love toy cameras. So when I combine Favorite Number 1 (toy camera) with what may be my favorite place in New York (North American Mammals wing; American Museum Of Natural History), I get happier than a fruit fly in an orchard.

More at the Flickr site here

*Of course, the stock was discontinued as of the first of the year. An unfavorable start, to be sure. I'm doing the math to see if I can easily adapt the back to take (what I guess would be...) the 600-series. Any ideas?

Consider this my first submission.

I'll begin this weblog formally with a quote from Picasso, because I am very vain and yet (or because of it) my ego bruises easily,

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

To this end, I submit what I hope will be a series of ongoing projects and eratta that will be of some value to anyone who reads this. Please consider the portfolio portions of my site static and this fluid; This will be for working through and soliciting opinion. I begin with this,



I made you a triptych. It is entitled:

"An Unlikely Advance In Intercontinental Relations."

It is exotic and mysterious.