The wedding itself went well. The rehearsal was, literally, 20 minutes long (we had no music, so there were many instances of "okay, at this point song 'X' will play for 3 minutes"). The rehearsal dinner (a term that has always confused me, since it seems to me that it should be the "after-rehearsal dinner," unless you're rehearsing to eat the wedding reception dinner) was very low key, punctuated only by Linde and Justin unwrapping their early wedding presents (boxer shorts and lingerie for the honeymoon).
Wedding day was very cold. The bride's family and her half of the party arrived early to start pictures (and were very patient while I retook a *lot* of photos). Due to some non-wedding pictures that were sprung on me (one of which included finding and arranging all 13 grandkids from my mother's side of the family), I was still doing photos when the guests started to arrive and missed most of the "getting the bride ready" candids that the photographer is supposed to catch. I suppose one advantage to having family do the photography is the option to "sneak in" non-wedding photos when the extended family all happens to be there.
The ceremony itself went off without a hitch (or with one hitch, I guess, although it was planned). It was the first time I'd seen my father in a tuxedo, which was interesting. I shot the entire ceremony itself without a flash using my fastest lens set to maximum ISO, so the pictures aren't blurry, but they're horribly grainy at full size. I think they're still decent for smaller prints, but I wouldn't be making 20x30 posters from them. All told, I took just shy of 400 photos at the church. The couple did in fact get married, and everyone thought it was a nice ceremony.
Between the church and the reception the bridesmaids "kidnapped" the groom; I was informed beforehand solely for the purpose of catching this shot as they exited the vehicle at the reception. Following the dinner was my slide show (I'll have a video version up eventually); it was well-received, especially my Photoshopped version of "American Gothic." I also decided to forgo the Sharpie revenge I had proposed as punishment for Haley's earlier coin assault on me, and instead added one extra photo to the slide show, a photo that earned me a laugh from 300 people and a yelled threat from Haley halfway across the auditorium (I later proposed that we were even, terms Haley initially rejected in favor of "it's so on now!", although she later relented, possibly after realizing how many other photos of her I have . . .).
The dance went well and Linde had a very good time. The only points of note were Haley's discovery that dancing with a wine glass in your hand can lead to fairly nasty cuts when someone crashes into you (necessitating assistance from her father and/or brothers to clean and rebandage the inch-long gash several times a day for the next four days) and the rather unfortunate arrival of one far-from-sober aunt who managed to fire off expletives at a variety of family members for only a few minutes before my brother and one of my uncles more or less carried her out of the auditorium and escorted her home.
The bride and groom braved icy roads on Christmas Day in return for cheap airfare to Las Vegas for the honeymoon (where "The Nutcracker" was on the agenda, although I haven't heard from them since I returned to Omaha, so I no information on how the honeymoon went).
All in all the wedding went surprisingly smoothly, and everyone enjoyed it. Congratulations, Linde and Justin. :)
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Friday, December 28
For the Geeks, a Silent Moment
Even though I switched to Internet Explorer after college and then to the far-superior Firefox a few years ago, it's still sad to see the official "death" of Netscape Navigator, the browser I and most other early Internet adopters used to explore the World Wide Web in the mid-to-late nineties. It's like hearing an old friend has passed on.
My journey from the arctic wastelands of the west to the slightly less-arctic wastelands of the east was a perilous quest of beauty and wonder, certainly worthy of a Tolkien ballad or an ABC after-school special.
The majestic sight of Orion rose before me for nearly an hour, giving the impression that the Interstate was driving directly into the mighty hero's belt. Not long after, a lumpy, potato-shaped but brilliantly orange moon laboriously climbed above the horizon, at first mistaken for a truck stop sign or billboard thanks to its unusual color.
Around Kearney, the journey became more surreal, wrapped, as it was, in what the radio called "freezing fog." This, as I soon learned, meant that the thick, tendril-like fog (cloaking the Interstate so closely that in places only the white lines on the concrete were visible in the headlights and in others forming an "artificial ceiling" a scant thirty feet above the ground from which light reflected) condensed into a thick frost on any surface it touched. For vehicles traveling through it, that meant the hood, windshield and front fenders (leaving the doors and trunk of every car untouched). The fog stayed with me, clearing in patches only to return again, all the way to my house.
On the bright side, I averaged close to 48 mpg on this trip. Not bad for a non-hybrid.
I need to type some things out before I'll be able to sleep tonight. It's a rather personal post, so feel free to skip it.
First and foremost, I need to apologize to my mother once again for some semi-excusable-but-still-unthoughtful behavior on my part tonight. I'm sorry my frustrations got the better of me, and I'll endeavor to work on it in the future.
Now to qualify the above remark. Although I imagine it's not an unheard of, or even unusual, aspect of some families, I am continually baffled and frustrated by one particular quirk of my family (both immediate and extended). Through whatever evolution of communication, many members of my family interact with and show affection for each other primarily through unsolicited criticism and teasing. Interestingly, there seems to be a critical mass required; individual family members visiting me in Omaha almost always relax into a friendly, constructive conversational tone, but the dynamic changes when more (sometimes as few as one but more commonly two or more) people are present. Another salient point is that these are criticisms of convenience; no one in my family actually cares that I dislike specific fast food chains for "reason X," but I've been lectured on just such a topic when the mood is right. It seems that certain family members subconsciously look for differences and capitalize on them in order to communicate friendship, with an expectation that a retort will be made and both sides will laugh at their mutual provocation. It's a mindset that has existed in my family for at least two generations (possibly more), and most seem to take it in stride, and in fact thrive under it.
Unfortunately I don't. I've never understood it, and while I've tolerated it for the sake of family peace, I've never been comfortable with it (it causes me a great deal of stress and anxiety). This has been accentuated in recent years as I've moved away and not been routinely subject to this dynamic, making the visits when I am around it stand out more vividly, often catching me off guard even when I consciously expect them. There hasn't been a family gathering within my memory when I haven't gritted my teeth as a variety of relatives have criticized my thinning hair, my lack of demonstrable female companionship, my dislike of hunting, my proper usage of English (yes, I've been criticized for this), my vocabulary, my clothing, my dietary habits, my lack of religion or any of a dozen other insignificant attributes of my lifestyle (and witnessed equally rude commentaries about every other member of the family). I understand they aren't truly being mean, that to them it's a harmless display of camaraderie, and normally I can put up with it for a day in order to appease my mother (who, by the way, is apparently like me and does not participate in the teasing, although she appears to be far more tolerant of it than I am). Sometimes, however, like tonight, things just go wrong. In a true display of pack mentality, I was soundly criticized tonight from three sides of the dinner table for, of all things, the fact that I don't eat red meat (something no one else at the table actually cares about), and my frustration grew as the second person began a new line of criticism while I was still formulating a rational reply to the first person (even though a rational reply was not what was expected; it's difficult to convey in text, but the offered statement was phrased in the form of "That's stupid. You should be like the rest of us.", which does not foment constructive conversation). When a third person laughed that I was overreacting in my defensiveness and just needed to accept the "teasing," I, in an overly emotional moment, withdrew not only from the conversation but from the family in general until I calmed down; unfortunately, this cool-down period overlapped with the family's Christmas present exchange, which caused a great deal of stress on my mother (and for which I am very sorry). It was all very regrettable on all sides.
I have no doubt that this was an incident that was going to happen sooner or later, given the factors (although it would have been better had it happened a night earlier). I also have no doubt that all sides will try to avoid it, and likely will fail, and will be subject to it again at some point in the future. Ingrained behaviors are very difficult to overcome, and this clash in personality types is fairly volatile. For my part, I promise to make a better effort in the future. Wish me luck.
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Saturday, December 22
Changing of the Season
For those I forgot to tell, I'm on vacation. Or a vacation of sorts, anyway, involving a moderate amount of stress and a considerable amount of work. To wit, my sister is embracing the grand concept of matrimony on Saturday, and, in addition to various menial tasks (decorating, moving heavy boxes from point A to point B, etc.), I have been tasked, as the photography/technology proponent of the family, as the photographer and the slide show creator. As I have never photographed a wedding before, I think a certain degree of trepidation is warranted, although the test shots today were decent (not stunning or fantastic, but passable). I have decided to shoot the wedding in RAW format (my first exposure to it), which supposedly has the advantage of being far more malleable in the processing stage but has the drawbacks of taking up roughly 3 times as much space (my 4gb card will now hold only 350 pictures instead of 1,100) and not being friendly on any computer without a RAW converter (including my parents'). Wish me luck.
The proceedings to this point have been remarkably light, with no major catastrophes and no frayed nerves. The rehearsal was very short, the rehearsal dinner was light-hearted and the preparations have been on schedule. An example of the light-heartedness is the sequence of acronyms that my father and siblings have decided, by committee, to apply to our immediate family:
My sister: "the B" (the bride) My father: "the FOB" (father of the bride) My mother: "the MOB" (mother of the bride) Me: "the BOOB" (the brother, older, of the bride) (thanks guys) My brother: "the BYOB" (the brother, younger, of the bride) My other sister: "the SOB" (sister of the bride) My sister-in-law: "the SLOB" (the sister, in law, of the bride)
In a less-creative (and far more cruel) vein, I was awakened this morning not by gunfire (as was visited upon me during my brother's wedding), but by Haley hitting me in the side of the head with a quarter. :P I've already warned her that she goes to bed before I do, and I have a Sharpie. My mother has qualified that there is to be no marking before the wedding photos (technically she said "no marking," but I'm pretty sure that had an unspoken footnote). Sunday, though, is a whole new story . . .
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Tuesday, December 18
Unintended Praise
I had some photos developed last week. When I arrived at the store to retrieve them, I noticed immediately that, below my name on the large white envelope (I had 8x10s made), was one hand-written word: "Professional?" I thought it odd, but put it out of my mind until seeing the college-aged girl glance at the envelope and stiffen. What followed was a strange conversation:
Her: *pulling out the 8x10s* Um, are these your photos? Me: *thinking she just wants to verify she pulled the right set* Yup, those are mine. *pause* Her: You're sure they're yours? Me: Um, yeah. *longer pause* Her: Um, did you take them? Like, physically take them? Me: *with a raised eyebrow and not as friendly* Yes. I took them. *pause* Her: Okay, um, I'm going to have to have you sign a form.
She then produced a waiver of some sort from beneath the counter that said something to the effect of "I state that I own the copyright to these photos and I waive the developer of any liability in the event of copyright infringement" and indicated I sign and date it. Before signing it I quizzed her about it. As she explained it, some photo developers now "eyeball" photos coming out of the automatic machine and flag those that look "too good" (her words) to be taken on amateur equipment. The person retrieving the photos is then quizzed to verify the photos weren't downloaded and printed from an unaware professional photographer (because, as she explained, if the real photographer shows up with the unauthorized print the developer is on the hook for monetary damages).
While the event was both frustrating and flattering at the same time, I'm a little concerned and perhaps a bit amused by the subjectivity involved in minimum-wage employees judging artistic merit by merely glancing at photos, a factor that mitigates any glow one might receive from being confused with a professional photographer. If the point is to avoid copyright infringement (and I have no doubt that her explanation was accurate), eyeballing for subjective quality is going to catch only a fraction of actual violations. Digital photos, like digital music, is almost impossible to maintain exclusively. The mere fact that you can see my Flickr photos on your computer means your computer now has a copy of the photo in its cache. Still, I can see the developer's desire to avoid legal repercussions, and weeding out obvious magazine scans and famous prints is better than nothing.
The jagged talons of overcommercialization are evident nowhere as clearly as the holiday season, when the frenzy of possession passing eclipses the more primal emotions that are supposed to be in ascendancy. This is perhaps most evident on the frustrated, overheated faces of shoppers in long lines, faces driven by social expectation rather than joy or desire. As an illustrative point, yesterday I placed my petty purchases on the conveyor, purchases which included a new pillow (for some reason I'm particularly hard on pillows; I have no idea why). These purchases took up the entirety of the available space, a state of affairs acceptable as the customer in front of me was still in the process of paying. I was rather astounded, then, when the man behind me, pushing a brimming cart, directed what can only be described as a scowl at me and then had the nerve to restack my purchases, roughly shoving them forward with the little rubber separator thingy and literally tossing the pillow on top of them. This cleared about two square feet of space, space he immediately filled with a very small percentage of his total cart before he, like everyone else in line, was forced to wait for the customer in front of me to finish paying, all the while giving me a look as if to say "How rude of you to hog the conveyor."
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Friday, December 14
The Keyes to the Kingdom
I wasn't even aware Alan Keyes was running for President on the Republican ticket until hearing the most recent Republican debate on NPR yesterday. If there were any chance of him winning I'd find his rhetoric frightening, but seeing as he's more of a caricature than a viable candidate he's vaguely amusing. Somehow, in his mind, the various judicial decisions that have reinforced the separation of church and state are an example of legislating from the bench (bad!) but his own bold statements that on his first day in office he would sign executive orders banning abortion and reintroducing God into the schools (examples of legislating from the executive branch) are apparently good. I'm not sure how his "strict Constitutional adherence" works when the executive branch is doing the legislative branch's job, but apparently he makes it work.
Lane and I settled comfortably into cushioned seats, with overpriced snacks in hand, to watch "The Golden Compass" yesterday. And were horribly disappointed. As fans of the intricately and brilliantly crafted world portrayed in the books, we were dismayed at watered down and missing themes, clumsily rewritten characters and plot hooks, arbitrarily rewritten chronology, a complete lack of character development for even the big name actors (with the exception of Nicole Kidman), and, most egregious, the complete excision of the ending (despite foreshadowing of the final plot twist; Lane and I both said "Wait, that's it?" when the movie just ended during the journey to what is the climactic finale in the book). The armored bears were impressive (and Ian McKellen makes an excellent bear's voice), and much of the CGI and visible world were excellent, but it hardly makes up for such a poorly edited adaptation.
The ending of the movie, mangling, as it does, the ending of the book, is a clumsy hook into the second book, but the studio has already indicated that whether future movies are made will depend on box office numbers for this movie, so it's entirely possible the movie never will be "finished." To be honest, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
For those curious about the real world controversy, the religious themes of the book were watered down so far as to be unrecognizable. Only the briefest of mentions of Dust being related to original sin and an across-the-board shift of the theme of questioning religious authority to questioning authority.
Certain acquaintances, primarily family, like to tease me now and then about my dietary habits, specifically my avoidance of red meat, seeing it, as they do, as a facet of my liberal tendencies or my general "oddness" rather than a health choice. I direct them now to this study, which correlates their teasing, to a lesser and less obvious degree, to teasing nonsmokers about not smoking.
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Tuesday, December 11
Divine Intervention
I have no problem whatsoever with people drawing strength from their faith or using it to help make sense out of complex emotional events. I make it a point not to criticize personal belief or interfere in private affairs.
Publicly extrapolating your belief out to real world events, on the other hand, makes you fair game.
Yesterday the security guard who killed the gunman in the recent Colorado church shootings said she was "given an assignment" from God to stop the gunman and that God protected her during the exchange in order to end the ordeal. An ordeal in which four people had already been killed. This raises a number of questions that flow naturally from her belief. Did God decide the four people who had already died weren't deserving of the same protection? Was he unable to protect them? Were there some politics going on?
I think it's great she was in a position to stop the gunman (and save a great number of additional lives). But if her belief is correct and God intervened to stop the shooting, couldn't he have done it with a lightning bolt before the shooting started? A traffic accident in front of a police cruiser while the gunman was on the way to the church? All the gunman's firearms jamming the first time he tried to fire them? There's a logical gap in the idea that God was there and did a very positive thing after very negative things had already happened. This leads directly into the Problem of Evil, which has been argued and discussed for several thousand years, and likely won't be resolved today.
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Sunday, December 9
Be Prepared
If Costco is selling caskets now, can Sam's Club be far behind? What do you do with your discount-chain casket until you're ready for it? Use it as a coffee table? Put books in it in the attic? Try to figure out how to explain to your dates why you have a coffin in your spare bedroom?
On Monday, those 16 agencies (under the auspices of a National Intelligence Estimate) released their conclusions that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and would not be capable of producing weapons-grade uranium until 2010. Panicked that its hard-line stance against Iran would be lost, the administration immediately tried to spin the report, focusing on the fact that Iran at one time *had* a program and that it would be possible to start it again (and then had to clarify that it actually did know about the report two months ago, contrary to its earlier statements this week), and actually threatened Iran to "come clean" rather than use this to start new diplomatic lines.
So here's the way it stands, as I see it. The administration used weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade Iraq, only to discover (and very reluctantly admit) that there was no weapons program. Since then the administration has warned repeatedly of Iran's near-nuclear capability (in August Bush suggested Iran would start WWIII when it completed its bomb) as a justification for military options. When told by its own agencies that Iran is not pursuing a program, the administration trumps with "Ah, but they *were*!" A few points:
1) The administration has to realize this smacks blatantly of putting goals ahead of facts. The administration seems bound and determined to invade another country, and intelligence reports be damned. It's almost a certainty that our "coalition of the willing" (let alone China) is not going to support military action against Iran after this report, so any posturing and potential force is going to be strictly from the U.S. That's an awfully lonely path, especially with a stretched military.
2) Iran having a nuclear weapon would be bad. I don't think there's any disagreement there. But the nuclear arena is far more complex than simply stating "if Iran gets a bomb it will start WWIII." It's interesting to note that North Korea has already carried out at least one nuclear test and claims to have functional nuclear weapons, yet receives far less public administration scrutiny (my more-liberal friends would retort with "that's because there's no oil there," whether or not that's true).
3) The U.S. has a long history of being selective in its weapons policies. Again, Iran having a nuclear weapon would be very bad, but notably the U.S. has never had any trouble with Israel having a non-disclosed nuclear weapons program (which has, according to intelligence reports, resulted in a functional nuclear arsenal). The nonproliferation treaties, which I agree with wholeheartedly, have the unfortunate drawback of being enforced by nations who maintain large nuclear arsenals on the argument that "we had them before the treaty so we get to keep them," an argument that certainly doesn't resonate with other sovereign nations.
The NIE report should encourage the administration to take a more diplomatic approach to Iran, rather than maintaining its apparent intent to intimidate Iran with force regardless of changes in the situation. The last six years should have shown by now that military force alone is not our best path to peace.
Condeleezza Rice today attempted to shore up the administration's frantic downplaying of the latest NIE report regarding Iran by reiterating most of the administration's points. Of note, though, was one statement that really caught my attention:
"I am not going to comment on that comment except to say that what the National Intelligence Estimate shows, and the transparency with which the administration released it, is what it means to live in a democracy and I hope one day that the people of Iran will live in a democracy too."
This, from the Secretary of State of an administration that (through the Ashcroft Memorandum) has actively attempted to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests whenever possible (not only classified information but, as a guiding principle, any information at all), that reluctantly admitted (after multiple spin attempts) a secret spying program that circumvented all FISA oversight, that engages in extraordinary rendition to kidnap foreign nationals in other countries and hold them in secret locations and that has cited Executive Privilege to hide as much of the administration's activities as possible (starting with the Cheney Energy Task Force). I'm afraid I'm not seeing the administration's dedication to "transparency."
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Monday, December 3
Living in Your Skin
The "big news" in the gossip world today was Jennifer Love Hewitt's recent vacation bikini photos and her response to them. Because apparently we think the glass house of America (with its truly scary obesity rates) is made of Plexiglass or something. I actually think she looks better than she does in her waif-like form. Good for her for being content with herself.
It's a feature of the human psyche to give temporary credence, or at least a wary benefit of the doubt, to ideas and products that benefit us personally, a facet of the thought process exploited since the dawn of trading by the smart-yet-unscrupulous among us. Whereas we immediately see the pitfalls and unlikely promises from our disinterested, third-party perspective, we dare to hope, sometimes greedily, sometimes desperately, sometimes in tired disgust, that the ungodly expensive "solution" presented to us will, in this *one* case, turn out to be the exception, that the honey-tongued salesman really cares about solving our problems and not lifting our wallets. It is a seductive slope, made slippery with exploitation and misdirection, and, when cleansed by rain or government intervention, reveals a pyramid made of despicable predators willing to kick people who are already down.
Late-night television is never a window into needed happiness (unless your happiness comes from "Girls Gone Wild" videos), although infomercials for foreclosed houses for $317, B-list-celebrity-endorsed exercise gyms and the ever popular (despite engendering grimaces in any non-paid woman) all-natural-herbal-male-enhancement pills would say otherwise. The newest commercial, one that sparked spontaneous laughter at its brazenness, is for a product called "ZeroSmoke," which promises to cure you of your nicotine addiction with two tiny ear-worn magnets. Not just any magnets, but "bio-magnets" (whatever those are). And not just any bio-magnets, but $40 bio-magnets (an arbitrarily assigned price not disclosed on the infomercial, for what should be fairly evident reasons). The presentation was filled with the standard compliment of "vaguely scientific-sounding but nonsense" language ("auricular therapy"? Right.) that should (but sadly doesn't) trip alarms with any one with a decent amount of common sense. Out of curiosity, I Googled the product with fairly predictable results:
- Multiple complaints from silly victims customers regarding the company's much-promoted 14-day money-back guaranty, which runs from the date of purchase, not the date you receive the magnets in the mail (despite the fact that the two are likely to be some distance apart), compounded by the program's 7-day treatment period (leaving many unhappy customers past the return date by the time they give up in frustration) and the possibility that the customer service phone number won't work.
- One egregious example of someone purporting to be from the company responding to a complaint in a review forum by providing personal information about the transaction (purchase and delivery dates, material from the customer's e-mails to the company, commentary on the customer's tone in the e-mails, etc.). That should be so unprofessional as to preclude consideration altogether.
- Complaints that the magnets (which are supposed to be worn for 4 hours a day for 7 days) are so weak that they fall off and are lost on a regular basis (and refunds are contingent on returning the product).
- Such classic language as "all-natural" (they're magnets, not hormones . . .) and "FDA listed and registered" (which means they filed paperwork that the device won't hurt you, not that the FDA actually agrees that the product works). And of course the inevitable "Results may vary," modern jargon for "this product doesn't work."
- And, unsurprisingly, not a single positive review from any non-"testimonial" source.
