From the comments:

Brendan McCauley, (aside from complimenting my photography, which I hearby propose be mandatory) recommends http://fjordphoto.org/ and I whole-heartedly agree. There is some great work on there — and a lot of it.

Ben notes that the paintings of Edmund Wyss are interesting. They are fantastic, actually. I saw a show of his last spring of his paintings of tape recorders and cameras. His paintings are both disconcerting in their accuracy and reassuring for giving us such solid, beautiful machines. I’d like to say that they’re a philosophical manifesto of sorts, but I’d then have to know what I was talking about.

John suggests “NOOOOooo” as an appropriate reaction to the recent (but unfortunately long-anticipated) announcement that: Due to marketplace conditions, Polaroid has discontinued almost all of its instant analog hardware products. Polaroid has also made the difficult decision to cease manufacturing of instant film products in 2008. I’ve got a bunch of cameras that are going to make dealing with this problem difficult indeed. My 180 might have to get a facelift.

From the weekend:

Eric soundly beating everyone at poker. I still can’t believe that getting drunk wasn’t a good strategy. Go figure.

Tony triumphant after deciding passed-out-Michael was his new play castle.

All year I look forward to taking our Xmas photograph and when the time finally comes, we’re so busy that it either never happens, or it does but looks pretty half-assed. I had imagined lots of tinsel, maybe some snow, and certainly antlers for all three of us. However, as it turned out, it was difficult enough to get Tony to look at the camera.

Anyway; we’re off to Nebraska tomorrow morning for the break, and are looking forward to seeing friends and family. It’ll be nice to get away from the city for a few weeks.

Happy whatever-you-do-this-time-of-year to everyone!

I’ve heard from Brendan and Adam that Tina Bear (Adam and Lizzie’s puppy) is very, very sick. This is awful news. I’m so sorry guys - I hope that she pulls through.

Steuben Hall on the Pratt campus. One of the places I’ve recently spent too much time.

Wow - almost a whole month has gone by and it feels like nothing. (I just realized that the acknowledgment of time passed quickly is so cliché it’s hardly even cliché anymore - so by recognizing it, I’m practically a trendsetter!)

Some of what’s happened:

• Tony got his balls removed
• Tessa gave me a quasi-hipster haircut (no images yet - I’m still pretty convinced it’s a mullet in disguise, and I’m waiting to grow into it a little still)
• Got through survey at school, and have been given permission to proceed with my final year (you can see the culmination of my first year and half of photo school at http://justinkohmetscher.com [and by the way, I’ve attempted to give the images I’ve been working on a title, and I’m fairly unsure of my success - please feel free to give me some suggestions or comments])
• Made it through midterms, even while sick and coughing, and wrote a fairly passable essay comparing Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North to Les Blank’s In Heaven There is No Beer
• Cut my tongue pretty bad on a Tootsie Pop

Now that I think about it, that’s really not that much stuff, so I have no excuse for ignoring my blog. However, it did feel really good to stay away from my computer for a while (I even went three days without checking my email once, which is my new all-time record [which will never happen again because if I don’t stay on top of my spam email my inbox gets so screwed up it takes a few hours just to weed out all the junk]).

I’d love to go party, but unfortunately I’m still kind of sick, so Tessa and I are staying at home and having a rainy Friday night working on our respective projects. Blog damn it, indeed.

So that this space doesn’t become a scrapbook of doggington (which it would), Michael has kindly set us up with a subdomain and another blog: tony.championbeginner.com.

From now on, Peeps McDinkledog will be featured over there, and I’ll try to keep the conversation over here a little less… er… doggy.

At the risk of this blog becoming merely about our new dog and his adventures, I proudly present Tony in his new sweatshirt. (You may recognize this same sweatshirt as once belonging to Louise, who grew out of it. Tony will probably never grow into it. Maybe if we get him a turtleneck to go under it or something.)