comrade trump in the oval office

Posted on January 25, 2017 by greg

Trump: Hey, I just farted.

Pence: A gentleman doesn’t fart, Mr. President; a gentleman breaks wind.

Trump: No, that was a fart, believe me. My first fart as President. First Oval Office fart, and it was a good one.

Pence: Yes sir. Very powerful. Maybe we should continue discussing your plan to investigate the massive voter fraud. We need to…

Trump: Three to five million illegal votes. I don’t even know what to say. Three to five million. That’s a lot of votes, Lot of votes. Dishonest media keeps…wait. I think I’m going to fart again. Hold on.

Pence: Mr. President, we need to discuss what agency will conduct the investigation. The FBI The DOJ? Maybe the FEC? And we have to determine where the funding will…

Trump: Nope, false alarm. Not a fart. No fart. I don’t care who does the investigation so long as it’s a great investigation. A beautiful investigation with good results. You know who does good investigations? Putin. We should get him on the phone and ask who does his investigations. Those are terrific investigations, over there in Russia. The best.

Pence: I’m not sure what would be wise, Mr. President. If the news media learn we’ve consulted the Russians, they’ll…

Trump: The crooked media, they’re against me, always have been. They don’t want me to succeed, the most crooked, dishonest group of people ever in the history of this great country. Ever in the history. It’s just despicable. Despicable. I was wrong, there’s another fart in there.

Pence: Yes sir, Mr. President. We don’t have to decide on those details today. Why don’t you just sign this executive order requiring…

Trump: Sure, give it to me. This is a great executive order. I think this may be my best executive order so far. This is why I got elected, to sign execu…yeah, there it is. Another fart. Now that was a presidential fart.

Pence: Praise Jesus.

Trump: The president gets to fart wherever he wants. There’s no conflict. No conflict. And you have to stand there and smell it. It’s good to be the president. Where’s Melania? She should smell this fart. Putin. He’d appreciate it. You know who can fart really well? Germans. It’s all those sausages. I don’t know what they put in those things. What’s the German word is for sausage?

Pence: I don’t speak German, Mr. President.

Secret Service Agent: Wurst.

Trump: What? What’s worse?

Secret Service Agent: The German word for sausage, sir. It’s wurst.

Trump: Worse than what?

Pence: Mr. President, why don’t we move on to…

Trump: Worse than what? I want to know what’s worse than what.

Secret Service Agent: I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t clear. Wurst is the German word for sausage. Double you, you, are, ess, tee. Wurst. As in bratwurst or liverwurst.”.

Trump: Best bratwurst, right here in Trump Tower. The best, absolute best.

Pence: We’re, uh, in the White House, Mr. President.

Trump: I know that. Oval Office. I had them change the curtains. Obama had crimson curtain. Not presidential. Not presidential. You wouldn’t believe how unpresidential. I had them replaced them with these classy gold ones. So much better. So much. Is there a menu here? I want to look at the menu.

Pence: Somebody get the president a menu.

Secret Service Agent: Here you are, Mr. President.

Trump: Is there bratwurst on the menu? Or maybe a taco bowl?

Pence: I’m sure the White House chef will prepare whatever you want, Mr. President. But for now perhaps we could discuss policy? We have a lot to do and we’re just getting started.

Trump: I know that. A lot of great stuff to do. The news media won’t report on all the great stuff we’re going to do. They’re only interested in undermining. Nothing but undermining. It’s all they…farted again. Maybe I should order in the press corps. You think I should bring in the press corps? Make them smell my fart? They’d just have to stand there and take it. Dishonest, corrupt media and their lies. At least a million people at my inauguration. At least. Maybe more. Probably more. Possibly not, but probably more. I’m just saying.

Pence: Mr. President, we have a lot on the agenda today. Why don’t we…

Trump: Mexicans, they’re good farters too. Not the best, not the best, but good. It’s those taco bowls they eat. Good farters. Not the best, though. Not as good as the Germans. Germans fart like a pack mule. But the Mexicans are pretty good. Not the best, okay. But pretty good.

Pence: Please, Mr. President, we have a long day ahead of us. We need to discuss your cabinet appointees, who are having some difficulty with certain members of Congress. I suggest we…

Trump: You know what would be good? A taco bowl with bratwurst. Somebody call down to the restaurant and tell them I want a taco bowl with bratwurst. Would that still be called a taco bowl? Call downstairs to the restaurant and tell them I want one.

Pence: Still in the White House, Mr. President.

Trump: Just do it. And after lunch I want to meet with the press.

a sea of pussy hats

Posted on January 23, 2017 by greg

Some folks are troubled by the pink pussy hats. Some are troubled, others are amused, or curious, or confused. A few are offended — not by the hats themselves, but by the pussy reference.

There’s no point in discussing the pussy hats unless we first talk about the Women’s March. First, it wasn’t a protest against Comrade Trump. It’s true that Trump was the spark that lit this fire and there were plenty of anti-Trump signs, to be sure. But while the anger at Trump is very real and cuts very deep, the Women’s March was not specifically or directly a protest against him. Had it been an actual protest against Trump, there would have been such a storm of righteous rage that the very earth itself would have been scorched. But, for the third time, this wasn’t a protest against Trump.

It was a rally and a march for women.

Now, the pussy hats. No, wait — we’ll come back to those in a bit. Let’s take a look at the people who attended the Women’s March. Or, rather, the Women’s Marches — because there were marches all across the United States. In fact, there were satellite marches on all seven continents. This was a planet-wide event. Aside from sharing the name Women’s March, as far as I can tell, the various marches all also shared a similar eclectic composition.

I can only speak directly of the march I participated in. There were smiling babies, and young parents trying to keep toddlers out of the mud, and grandmothers wearing pussy hats, and people singing, and a small gathering of cheerful grey-haired Wiccans wearing cartoonish witch’s hats, and a guy wearing a faded MOPAR/NASCAR jean jacket over a Stand Up for Standing Rock t-shirt, and a young woman in a wheelchair with a rainbow blanket around her legs, and people of every age and faith and color and a spectrum of gender identities and orientations so broad it required a significant chunk of the alphabet to enumerate them — and all of us talking and laughing and shouting and hugging each other and chanting. You’d probably see many of those same people at an anti-Trump protest; but they wouldn’t be smiling and laughing.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about the rally — about ALL the rallies and marches across the globe — was the way women took the insults made against them by Comrade Trump (and lawdy, there were a LOT of insults against women) and transformed them into positive symbols of resistance. It’s a sort of socio-political aikido, redirecting the momentum of an act of aggression and using it against the aggressor. He calls Hillary Clinton a nasty woman, they defuse the insult by embracing the title. It’s brilliant, really. It’s a gentle turning aside of an attack meant to wound, and turning it aside without excusing or forgetting or forgiving the attack or the attacker.

And that brings us to the hats. Some folks questioned the use of pink pussy hats. Most of the criticism I’ve seen seems to be grounded in the notion that the hats themselves are supposed to be representative of actual vaginas. Since not all vaginas are pink and since there are a lot of folks who are lacking any sort of vagina at all, the argument is that the pussy hat is an unsuitable symbol. I get that. As a person without a vagina, I get it.

But I disagree.

The pink pussy hat, as I understand it, is a response to Comrade Trump’s cavalier and offensive discussion about grabbing women “by the pussy.” The hats weren’t meant to be taken literally; they aren’t symbolically appropriate for every individual who participated in the marches. But the hats ARE a simple, easily accessible, highly visible, socially elastic device that indicate solidarity for the entire constellation of rights and causes that joined the orbit around the Women’s March on Washington.

Much of the beauty and power of the Women’s March is that it was inclusive. It wasn’t the ‘Stop the Pipeline’ march or the Reproductive Rights march or the Black Lives Matter march or the Save the ACA march or the Immigrant Support march or the ACLU march or the LGBTQIAPK march or the Religious Freedom march or the Climate Change is Real march — but all of those causes were made welcome and encouraged to join.

In my opinion, that makes the pink pussy hat perfectly appropriate. The same arrogance and contempt and ignorance and hostility that allows Comrade Trump to brag about grabbing women by the pussy is also directed at gay folks and scientists and Muslims and water protectors and union members. Trump (and his Cabinet of Nazgûl) assumes he has the right to grab everybody by the pussy, whether they have one or not.

But, again, this wasn’t a protest against Trump. It was an affirmative stand for the dignity of all people. It was an announcement made by a few million people around the world that we’re all going to support each other.

The pussy hat is optional.

resist

Posted on January 20, 2017 by greg

Later today the United States will formally inaugurate as President a willfully ignorant, inexperienced blowhard — a man who is dangerously unprepared to occupy the Oval Office and temperamentally unfit to deal with international and domestic affairs. A man who was elected to that office through gerrymandered Congressional districts, aided by systematic voter suppression tactics, and with the assistance of a covert campaign of misinformation and propaganda employed by agents of a dictatorial foreign regime led by a former Soviet KGB officer.

We will witness the swearing-in of an arrogant, petty, mean-spirited, selfish and self-centered man — a vindictive narcissist who is entirely lacking in empathy and loyalty, a thin-skinned bully who attacks at any perceived insult and is accustomed to picking fights and letting his lawyers tidy up after him.

We will have as president a boor, a braggart, a crude vulgarian who mistakes ostentation for taste. Our nation will be led by an amoral sexist buffoon, a blatant and unrepentant liar who has no respect for the law or for science or for the truth, a man who is completely lacking in integrity, devoid of sincerity, and utterly without principle.

Starting today, we’re going to have a president from whom we have to protect ourselves. That fact is disheartening, it’s humiliating, it’s almost incomprehensible that it could happen.

But it did. Get used to it. Get used to resisting. Get used to having to call your members of Congress on a regular basis. Get used to marching and demonstrating. You have to get used to it — or just give up. Resistance or surrender. There really isn’t any other option.

But here’s the good news: there are more of us than there are of them. And starting today and tomorrow, we’re going to let them see us.

Resist in any way you can. Resist in every way you can. Resist as writers, resist as photographers, resist as artists. Resist creatively. Just fucking resist every attempt to reduce us, to marginalize us, to limit us, to stop us.

Respect our existence

or expect our resistance.

there’s a photo, right there

Posted on January 19, 2017 by greg

I’m out taking a walk, right? I had an errand to run in a part of town I’ve never been in before, and when I’m done with my errand, I say to myself ‘Dude, long as you’re here, why not take a walk, look around.’ So I do. But the business area turns into a generic suburban neighborhood, and I decide I’m going to take the next left and head back to the car.

Then I see this garage door. I’m thinking to myself ‘Dude, there’s a photo, right there‘, and what happens? Garage door goes up, car pulls into the drive and directly into garage, and a woman gets out and begins unloading groceries.

What am I supposed to do? I can’t just stand there watching this woman unload groceries. That would be totally creepy. I can’t really offer to help her with the groceries, on account of that would be mega-creepy. So I have to continue my walk. I tell myself ‘Dude, you know where the house is — you can come back when nobody’s home‘ which would sound super mega-creepy if folks could hear what I was telling myself, but they can’t so I turn on my heels and start walking again.

I’ve gone maybe twenty-five, thirty yards, and I hear that garage door sound. You know that sound; it’s sort of a mechanical murmur. Anyway I turn, and hey, the garage door is going down again. Only now my brain is caught in the don’t-be-creepy loop, and I start wondering if I go back and photograph the garage now, will anybody in this suburban neighborhood who happens to be looking out their window see me back outside the house and call the police? Which would be understandable in a suburban sort of way.

Then I say to myself ‘Dude, won’t nobody be looking out the window — and even if there IS somebody looking out the window, they probably won’t call the police — and even if they DO call the police, won’t nothing happen on account of all I’ll have to do is say ‘Officer, cast your eyes upon that garage door’ and the officer would say ‘Dude, there’s a photo, right there’ and everything would be cool‘. So I turn around and head back to the house.

I shoot two quick frames, chimp the photos real quick, then I’m back on my way. No police were alerted. No neighbors were alarmed. No grocery-toting woman was creeped out. I call that a good walk.

probably didn’t happen, but still entirely believable

Posted on January 11, 2017 by greg

See, here’s the problem: all that unverified stuff reported about Comrade Trump could be true. Some of it is almost certainly bullshit. Maybe most of it. But even the most disturbing parts (and different folks will be disturbed by different stuff) are surprisingly believable.

Let’s take the most discussed (although maybe the least important) aspect of the (sorry, but I have to say it) leaked report. It’s claimed that Trump hired

…the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.

Is that likely? No, it’s not likely at all. Trump may be an egocentric fucking idiot, but he’s not THAT much of an egocentric fucking idiot. Probably.

It’s that ‘probably‘ that’s the problem. Because damn it, an incident like that simply can’t be rejected out of hand. It may be improbable, but it’s not hard to imagine Trump pulling crazy shit like that. Let’s not forget, this guy has made his sexual proclivities part of his public persona. Kinky sex with prostitutes to defile a bed slept in by Obama two years earlier? C’mon, that’s not very believable. Kinky sex with prostitutes? Totally believable.

In fact it’s NOT hard at all to believe Russia has information of some sort about Trump that can compromise him. Sexual, financial, ethical — doesn’t matter. It’s NOT hard to believe Russia would use that information (assuming it exists) to force Trump to serve Russian interests over American interests. In fact, it could be said we saw indirect evidence of that last summer when the GOP was crafting its party platform. The original platform included language calling for the U.S. to “provide lethal defensive weapons to the Ukrainian government” following Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Russia’s ongoing support for the separatist insurrection. Trump’s people had that strong anti-Russia language removed. To my knowledge, that was the ONLY major change Trump requested in the GOP platform. How does one account for that? Are we to believe that out of ALL the material in the GOP platform, the only section Trump disagreed with had to do with the Ukraine?

Comrade Trump and his transition staff keep claiming this is all an attempt to undermine and de-legitimize his presidency. I suspect that’s probably accurate — but it’s only partially accurate. It’s more likely an attempt to undermine and de-legitimize ANY U.S. presidency. And hey, it’s worked.

Vlad has to be laughing his KGB ass off.

this is not somebody that would have been prohibited from having a gun

Posted on January 8, 2017 by greg

So this guy walks into…wait, let me start over. This guy who has military experience walks into the FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska, and tells them…wait, let me start over again. This guy, who served in Iraq but received a general discharge from the military after having gone AWOL a few times, walks into the FBI office…wait. Let’s try that again. This guy who’d served in Iraq and was basically kicked out of the military, and who was facing domestic abuse charges for having hit and strangled his girlfriend, walks into the Anchorage office of the FBI and tells them he’s hearing voices. They send him…wait, damn it, let me start over again.

This guy, Esteban Santiago, who’d served in Iraq, who’d gone AWOL often enough that he’d been given a general discharge from the military for ‘unsatisfactory performance’, who was being prosecuted for punching and strangling his girlfriend AND who’d been arrested for violating the subsequent restraining order forbidding him to go near her home, walks into the Anchorage office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and tells them he’s suffering from auditory command hallucinations directed by the CIA requiring him to watch violent propaganda videos released by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which sparks the FBI into contacting Anchorage law enforcement, who subsequently seize Santiago’s Walther 9mm pistol and transport him to an area psychiatric facility for four days of evaluation, which determined Santiago wasn’t mentally ill.

So the Anchorage police gave him back his handgun.

I shit you not, they returned Esteban Santiago’s gun to him. Why? Because, according to U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler,

“As far as I know, this is not somebody that would have been prohibited (from having a gun) based on the information they had.”

What bits of information did they have? Let’s enumerate them, shall we?

He was awaiting trial for assaulting his girlfriend. During an argument, she’d locked herself in the bathroom and called the police. Before the police arrived, Santiago (allegedly) kicked in the bathroom door, struck her, throttled her, then fled.
He was also awaiting trial for violating the restraining order keeping him away from the woman who was now his ex-girlfriend.
He presented himself to the FBI, confessed to having auditory hallucinations, and stated he’d been watching violent videos put out by militant Islamist terrorists.
He was given an evaluation that determined he didn’t meet the criteria for being legally considered mentally ill.

Let’s look at that last issue first. Can a person who suffers from auditory command hallucinations NOT be mentally ill? Sure. In Alaska, mental illness is defined as having “an organic, mental, or emotional impairment that has substantial adverse effects on an individual’s ability to exercise conscious control of the individual’s actions or ability to perceive reality or to reason or understand.”

This sort of nonsense really happens. I once had a client who suffered from auditory command hallucinations. My client believed he had Go-Bots (these were transforming robot toys similar to Transformers) sitting on his shoulder. The Go-bots would identify gay men, then tell him to shoot those men the kneecap. (Spoiler: Go-Bots have shitty gaydar; none of the men he kneecapped were actually gay — not that it matters.) My client wasn’t considered medically ill because he knew shooting people in the kneecap was wrong and because he felt he could refuse to obey the Go-Bots if he’d really wanted to (he just didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t trust the Go-Bots).

If Santiago was able to “exercise conscious control” of his actions, then legally he wasn’t mentally ill. By going to the FBI and informing them he was being controlled by the CIA, he was demonstrating that conscious control. Seriously — by reporting that he was hearing voices to the FBI he was proving that he wasn’t legally mentally ill.

Now, you’re probably saying ‘Dude, the guy STILL assaulted his girlfriend! Shouldn’t that disqualify him from toting around a firearm? WTF? Allow me to respond. Dude, this is Alaska. In some other states, Santiago’s firearm would have been confiscated. But Alaska? They don’t even stop folks who are convicted of domestic abuse from buying and carrying firearms — and Santiago hadn’t even been tried yet.

So hey, let’s give him back his gun. And hey, while we’re at it, let’s let him transport that handgun from Alaska to the Gun Nut Mecca of Florida. Sure, we’ll make him transport it in checked luggage (not carry-on luggage, because that would be crazy), but let’s give him access to it once he lands. I mean, we don’t want to make it difficult for Esteban Santiago to protect himself once he lands in Fort Lauderdale, do we.

Because as T. Jefferson said, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. And unsuspecting passengers idling around waiting for their baggage to arrive. Freedom isn’t free, right?

corrupt as fuck, don’t care who knows it

Posted on January 3, 2017 by greg

You almost have to be impressed by the audacity of it. It’s a shameful thing to say, but you sort of expect ~~a few several many~~ a significant number of politicians to be, well, corrupt. It’s a given, right? They have power and we all know what power does, right (spoiler — it corrupts).

But Jeebus on a nickel, what Congressional Republicans did last night? Completely and totally fucking shameless. They gathered together in a conference and voted to rip the balls right off the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. Wait, it’s worse than that. They did it in secret. Wait, still worse than that. They did it on a Federal holiday.

When was the last time Congressional Republicans voluntarily went to work on a Federal holiday?

Republicans gather to vote on new ethics rules.

Okay — some boring but necessary history. Back on January 30, 1798 (that’s right, we’re talking the end of the 18th century here), Congress was in the process of impeaching a guy named William Blount (who’d borrowed heavily to invest in land along the Mississippi River, and when it looked like France might gain control of Louisiana and thereby control the mouth of the river, tried to make a deal with Britain to seize both Florida and Louisiana in order to keep the French out and allow Blount to sell his river land for a buttload of coin). During the impeachment process, while the House was in session, a guy named Roger Griswold (who belonged to the Federalist party) was trying to get the attention of another guy, Matthew Lyon (who was a Democratic-Republican — and yes, that was an actual political party back then). Lyon was deliberately ignoring Griswold, who got pissed off and called Lyon a ‘scoundrel’. That was considered a profanity back then. Lyon responded by spitting tobacco juice on Griswold.

William Blount (Democratic-Republican, Tennessee), corrupt as fuck; did not get impeached.

William Blount (Democratic-Republican, Tennessee), corrupt as fuck; got away with it.

These two guys continued to fuss at each other for a couple more weeks, then Griswold went apeshit (which, it turns out, is NOT a legal defense) and attacked Lyon with his cane (gentlemen routinely carried canes back then — go figure). Lyon retreated to a fireplace, seized a pair of tongs, and the two went at it. They had to be tackled and separated by other members of Congress.

Griswold versus Lyon, Congressional Death Match of 1798.

Congress decided they shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of shit happening at work, so they formed the House Committee on Ethics. The committee would be responsible for investigating and punishing breaches of ethics and decorum by House members. The new Ethics Committee looked into the fuss between Lyon and Griswold and they came to a decision — which basically was this: Don’t pull that sort of shit again, especially while Congress is in session. In other words, they did bupkes.

And that, not surprisingly, set the precedence for a LOT of decisions by the House Committee on Ethics. When you put members of Congress in charge of policing the behavior of members of Congress, you end up with a LOT of Don’t pull that sort of shit again decisions. Which is why, in 2008, after a couple hundred years of bupkes, Congressional Democrats led an effort to create the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent, non-partisan entity tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct against members of the House of Representatives and/or their staff.

That sounds great, doesn’t it. But the OCE was pretty limited in what it could do. There were limits on how long they could investigate (about three months at most) and they didn’t have any subpoena power. At the end of their investigation, the OCE turned in a report to the House Committee on Ethics. Yeah, that’s the same committee that’s mostly done bupkes for two centuries — but the OCE was also required to make their report public, which put more pressure on the HCE to actually DO something. And the OCE could, if necessary, refer allegations of criminal conduct to prosecutors.

Which is probably why House Republicans wanted rip off the OCE’s balls (tiny as they were). Here’s what the Republicans did (and remember, they did this in secret on a holiday). First, they changed the name of the agency. Now it’ll be the Office of Congressional Complaint Review. What were once ‘ethics investigations’ are now just ‘complaints’. They also removed OCE’s power to investigate anonymous tips, and they’ve prevented the OCE from referring ‘complaints’ of criminality to prosecutors. Oh, and that public report? The one that might embarrass Congress into action? That’s history.

The jackass who sponsored this legislative turd is Republican Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. He claims it will improve the due process rights for the House members who find themselves under investigation. This is the only time in modern history a Republican has shown any concern about anybody’s due process rights.

Bob Goodlatte (Republican, Virginia)

What amazes me — and probably shouldn’t — is how open they were about this. Yeah, they met in secret on a holiday, but after de-balling the OCE, they actually announced it. Basically, this is a proclamation that Republicans under a Trump administration intend to Make Corruption Great Again.

Trump would probably want to put a portrait of William Blount on the new twenty-dollar bill. If he knew who William Blount was. And I’m positive he doesn’t. By the end of the first Trump term, I fully expect the motto of the United States will switch from E Pluribus Unum to “I Got Mine, Jack.” Or, if you prefer it in Russian, Я получил мое, домкрат.

Editorial Note: In case you’re wondering what happened to William Blount, the guy who started all this, the House voted to impeach him. However; the Senate refused to convict him, and Blount returned to Tennessee. There he worked to fuck over the Cherokee natives who were losing their land to settlers. After he was accused of working to fuck over the Cherokee natives, Blount sued his accuser for libel. The suit was dismissed by a Judge Campbell. Blount managed to get elected to the Tennessee State Senate, at which point he worked to impeach Judge Campbell. The Tennessee House voted to impeach the judge, but the Senate refused to convict him.

Ethics is some tricky shit.

LSotY

Posted on January 1, 2017 by greg

I belong to this odd collective of photographers called Utata. I’ve written about the group and some of its projects before, so I won’t bother you with a description again. I mention it because one of our elastic traditions (by elastic I mean sometimes we do it, sometimes we don’t, some of us do it, some of us don’t) is to post the last selfie we took in the year to our Flickr group.

Yesterday was the last day of 2016, so I went searching through my files (I say ‘files’ as if I actually have some sort of organized system of storing photographs, which polite folks would suggest was an exaggeration) for the last selfie I shot. Turns out that was June 20th.

It’s a perfectly acceptable selfie (at least by my fairly low standards), but June 20th was six months ago. And let’s face it, the photo is more about the cat than me. Still, it’s technically a selfie so I figured it would do.

If I had a lick of sense, that would have been it. But no. I decided I should probably take a new photo — a current photo, a photograph that is more clearly a selfie, a photograph with less cat. Did I prepare this in any way? No, I did not. Did I change clothes or shave or even bother to comb my hair? No, I did not. Did I even look in a mirror first? No, I certainly did not. Why didn’t I do any of those things? Because I am, on any number of metrics, a fucking idiot.

Here’s more proof of my idiocy: I picked up my tablet (okay, you’ve almost certainly heard folks say you shouldn’t ever take a photo with a tablet because the cameras suck; turns out that’s true, and it’s even more true when it comes to taking a selfie because the front-facing camera (or is it the rear-facing camera? I don’t know) sucks even more), stepped into the middle of the room where there was the most light, and hey bingo at 5:09 Central time on December 31st, I took a selfie.

It was what you’d call a ‘tactical mistake’. I looked at the photo and thought ‘Lawdy, what the hell was I thinking?‘ It has been pointed out to me on occasion that I often look like a thug in photographs. I think we now have to amend that to ‘an aging thug’. Or maybe ‘a confused, aging thug’. Because, c’mon — just look at that. It looks like I’m concerned the camera is going to eat my soul.

I started to delete the photo, at which point I realized ‘Dude, THIS is the last selfie of the year.’ After a brief moment of horror, I realized I could comb my hair, put on different clothes, find some good light, take a selfie with an actual camera, and then THAT photo would be the LSotY.

But that would be sort of a dick move. Now, I’m perfectly capable of making dick moves. Mostly I make them without thinking. Deliberately making a dick move amplifies its essential dickishness (witness Donald J. Trump’s New Year’s tweet). I couldn’t really do that to Utata, could I. So I was stuck with this photo.

And then I thought of Prisma. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an application created by some Russian developer that doesn’t just apply a filter on top of an existing photo; it actually scans the digital data and uses that information to apply a ‘style’ to a photo. I’ve had the app on my tablet for a few months, but never really bothered to play with it. This seemed like a good time to try it.

Udnie

Prisma must have around thirty different styles (yeah, I could count them, but really, how likely is that?). The style above is based (loosely, I’d say) on Francis Picabia’s painting Udnie (Young American Girl, The Dance). I don’t see it, myself. But hey, it’s an improvement on the original photo.

It’s much easier to see the connection between the Heisenberg style and the famous Heisenberg drawing of Walter White from Breaking Bad. I like this style, although I have to say it’s a wee bit alarming to see that a Breaking Bad-based style makes me look LESS like a thug than in the original photo.

Heisenberg

Some of the Prisma styles don’t seem to have any relationship to — well, to anything at all. For example, the Colored Sky style has a lot of color, but I don’t see much sky in it. Unless you’re hallucinating. Or maybe on another planet. The shark eyes are sort of cool, though.

Colored Sky

And the Aviator style? Seriously, what does this have to do with aviation? It should have been called the Braveheart style. It’s got Mel Gibson as William Wallace splashed all over it. Well, except there isn’t an implied claymore in the photo, and there’s no hint at all of consuming “…the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.” So okay, maybe less Braveheart and more Pogo the Clown.

Aviator (seriously?)

The Urban style doesn’t strike me as particularly ‘urban’ unless you’re defining ‘urban’ as ‘scowling like a motherfucker’. Really, I don’t understand where that scowl comes from. I’m a nice guy. Honest. A harmless guy. I’ve never once been convicted of a felony.

Urban

I suppose it’s appropriate to end this with the Mononoke style. I’m not sure if Prisma named the style after Princess Mononoke, the 1997 anime film by Miyazaki, or the 2007 Mononoke television series about an itinerant medicine seller, or the Japanese term for a supernatural spirit that can inhabit or possess…well, just about anything, it seems. It’s appropriate to end with this style because that’s sort of what Prisma does. It doesn’t lay a filter ON the photo; it digs down into the photo’s data and sort of inhabits the photograph. This is probably the closest approximation of the original selfie; it transforms the photo while still retaining its essential confused, aging thugness.

Mononoke

In general, I’m not a fan of apps like Prisma. I just can’t take them seriously. I certainly don’t believe Prisma’s claim that their app “transforms your photos and videos into works of art.” That’s fundamentally bullshit. You don’t create art by picking styles off a menu. That’s not making art; that’s shopping.

But you can have fun shopping with Prisma. Watching the transformation is a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. And that’s the thing about Utata — it’s all about having fun. So I legitimately took my last selfie of the year at 5:09 Central time on December 31st. But I don’t think anybody can fault me for spending maybe twelve minutes on January 1st shopping with Prisma.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job