Tonight, we practiced our Christmas card photo. It’s a good thing we’re starting early this year. I need a little work.

We went to our favorite Target store this afternoon to buy an assortment of needed goods: Hot Shots (DVD for only $5.50!), Manwich (I can’t get enough!), a spatula (so we now have one meat-spatula and one non-meat-spatula [that is: a spatula for meat and a spatula for other things that are not made of meat; I did not mean that we now have one spatula made of meat and one spatula made of something other than meat… just so we’re clear here]), toilet paper (who doesn’t love that stuff!), and some new boxer briefs (I made the switch to the ultimate compromise about two years ago, and have never looked back - unless it’s really hot, and then I have to wear regular boxers).

I don’t usually get the “premium” boxer briefs - I’m more of a “regular” or “typical” kind of guy. But because every other brand and type in my size was missing from the shelves (and so was the meat loaf pan I wanted, which I find very suspicious and probably not at all coincidental) I had to get the fancy ones. When we got home and started putting stuff away I noticed something very interesting about my “premium” underwear: a “new” innovation from Hanes - a feature found only on packaging containing the most elite boxer briefs - they came in a resealable bag.

A resealable bag? Really? What for? Why?!

Michael recently pointed me to an article in which Jerry Saltz declares that

art is part of a universal force. It has no less purpose or meaning than science, religion, philosophy, politics, or any other discipline, and is as much a form of intelligence or knowing as a first kiss, a last goodbye, or an algebraic equation. Art is an energy source that helps make change possible; it sees things in clusters and constellations rather than rigid systems.

The article has a clever ending involving cats and dogs that I’m not quite sure is adequate or appropriate. However, in general he makes a very spirited defense for art.

But wait - was art under attack (any more than usual)? Or is this just a continuation of the discussion for art that we have to continually engage in, because if we don’t, we’re not really artists?

Though I mostly agree with Saltz’s sentiments, it feels like that’s all there is: sentiments. And so what? Do we need more back-slapping? Is that even what this is?

To say that art “exists within a holistic system” is kind of like saying that art is and then not explaining what “is” means. What doesn’t exist within a “holistic system?” Aren’t all wholes comprised of parts?

I just saw that this HDR photograph of Manhattan just got Dugg, and I almost barfed when I started to read the comments (let alone the photograph), on both Flickr and Digg.

Why do we have to extreme-ify everything beautiful? Is this photograph interesting to people in the same way that 2-liter bottles of soda are serving-sizes?

Truly, photographs like this embody the Thomas Kinkaid experience.

I’ve only had a little time to work on music since I moved, and I haven’t finished my portfolio website (so justinkohmetscher.com still just sits there with nothing on it) but enough is enough! Here’s the first all-NYC song (except I recorded the drums in Bellingham, WA, in July): Music for when Tessa walks to the mailbox (5.56 MB)

Also: I’ve got two new songs that will soon be released on an upcoming A Situation (their website is not up to date) compilation album. More on those to come! (Heh… I said “more on.”)

Things that should be bad but are instead suprisingly good:

1. Kalimotxo (also Calimocho - however, the former looks way cooler)
   A mixture of cola and red wine. Sounds freaking awful, but I’ve just made my third one ever, and I found the right mixture: really cheap Cabernet (Trader Joe’s has $4-5 bottles of wine that are perfect for this) and caffine-free diet Pepsi. Hey, I’m closer to thirty than I am to twenty-five.
2. Digital photography, in general
   I’m very late to this game - but you know what they say: better late than last! Seriously, it has (had?) the potential to look totally soulless, but I’ve found that going the non-film route has left me feeling mostly satisfied. No, it will never feel quite as magic. But if I don’t tell you, and you can’t tell, does it really matter? Okay, yes, it still matters. But still! Fake tilt-shift and HDR aside, I’m beginning to love the idea that I might potentially be wasting less material this way.
3. Manwich
   This is something that Tessa introduced me to. No, really. We were shopping one day, and she told me how much she loved the stuff. She makes it with TVP (one of the few fake-meat things I like too) and I usually make it with ground beef (ground turkey is next). It’s so freaking good. The key topping ingredients: a lot of yellow mustard and pickles. (I can’t wait to try the 8,500 calorie version!)

Things that should be good but are instead terribly awful:

1. Howard the Duck
   For some reason, I remembered this movie as fantastic. I think I just remembered seeing a duck-woman’s boobs during the first scene, where Howard gets sucked from his universe into ours. When I was young, that was freaking cool. Now, it’s just really gross. I made it about 15 minutes into the movie before giving up on it. It’s Rambo III for me, thank you very much.
2. Mind-mapping
   I’m sure it’s just me, because I hear more about great this is every day, but I find mind-maps as usefull as abstract-expressionist art. I mean, I love the way it looks, and it means a lot and everything - but how am I going to write a paper with that? Everytime I open up OmniGraffle and try to use it, I end up just moving around a bunch of words and making arrows go all over the place. I need lists, damn it!
3. People carrying around tiny dogs in what look like gym bags
   I see these on the subway, on the streets in Manhattan, and even during my classes. At first, I thought it was funny - I mean, I used to torment my cats by putting laundry baskets over them (thereby sentencing them to “kitty jail”) and once I even found a little denim vest that I made a kitten wear for a few minutes. And I love dogs (though I’m not especially fond of the little ones), but when dog owners begin to treat their pets like some strange mix of luggage and baby, there is something horribly wrong.

I’m reading The Origin of the Work of Art by Heidegger and am about ready to slap myself.

The thingly feature in the work should not be denied; but if it belongs admittedly to the work-being of the work, it must be conceived by way of the work’s workly nature. If this is so, then the road toward the determination of the thingly reality of the work leads not from thing to work but from work to thing.

Right?

High dynamic range photography is something I’ve seen more and more of lately (flickr HDR pool) and it seems like the closest thing to truly approximating the way human eyeballs see things.

It’s strange, because anyone who is familiar with the way the world looks through traditional photographs is struck by how strange the world looks through HDR photography; there is a flatness and evenness that seems distinctly painterly. Most of the photographs in that flickr pool look like heavily (and clumsily) worked digital images.

The technology is still apparently in its infancy, and so, I assume the photographs will get better in time. However, upon finding out that Photoshop CS2 has a merge-to-HDR function, I had to try my hand at this. Last night I experimented a little, but the effect is so subtle indoors that it would be difficult to tell I had merged several photographs into one. I tried again this afternoon, and here’s what I got:

I’m not going to go into detail about the process (because that’s not really the part that interests me, and you can find instructions elsewhere), but here are the five images I started with:

Basically, Photoshop (or whatever program you choose to use) merges the images together (magically, I believe) and allows for the preservation of detail in highlights and detail in shadow concurrently.

I’m going to keep experimenting. I’d like to find a use for this that wasn’t so blatent - I like the idea of using this in a subtle way.