Fish!

First up: new music. Sorta. Trey came down last night and we had a very nice time. He introduced me to a musical act that I had not heard of, undoubtedly because I am late to the party. Folks, hie thee hence over to the electric Internets, locate and clamp onto this thing called a youtube, and look up Pomplamoose. Watch the video for their cover of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” I… wow.

Next up: Russian website spam bots. I get two or three new registrations a day from these guys. They register so they can spam my comments sections with ads for erectile dysfunction products. a) You can’t comment on this site without a COMPLETED registration, which means you create an account and then answer an email to the address you gave. That takes care of 99% of the spambots, they don’t have real addresses. Then, of course, I delete ‘em all. This is why I don’t allow anonymous comments, meaning this is why you have to register to comment here. It’s not because I hate you folks, it’s because spammers are assholes who ruin things for the rest of us. b) I don’t have any erectile dysfunction, and certainly don’t wish to buy any from the Internets. In Russia. From a spammer who’s already shown themselves to be dishonest… wait, how is this supposed to work again? Someone who lies and deceives so that they can misappropriate MY personal webspace for their advertising, graffiti at the very least and theft depending upon your personal perspective, then tells me that they can make my penis stiff again, and I’m supposed to trust them and believe them? Er… wow. I guess that’s a stupidity tax, just like the lottery is a tax on mathematical illiteracy. Good luck, y’all!

The first shot here was taken with my Mamiya RB67 on Delta 3200 film. Don’t recall the lens. Might be a 50mm, might be a 127mm. I’m thinking the 50. Do click the image to see a higher-res version, lots to enjoy here.

Indigo Phoebe Olsen, on or near the day of her birth.

Some un-named cowboy, North-Central Florida, June 2010. Shot taken with a Nikon N90s and a Tamron 24-70 zoom, on expired Kodak Ektachrome Plus EPP.

Fomapan 100, Burke & James Press 4×5, un-named 75mm f1.9 oscilloscope lens that can’t be used, yada yada, 1/2 second exposure @ WFO - 1 stop or so. Um, I was told there would BE no math?

Your mother darns socks that smell.

Do please click on the above, there’s lots of lovely detail and creamy texture to marvel at.

Perhaps “marvel” was a bit much, no?

“Yo Mark Ingram, I’m happy for you and Ima let you finish… but Texas is the best team of all time.  Of all TIME!”

Bad stuff:  our twins.  A week before Thanksgiving, all is on schedule for a late Nov, early Dec.  delivery.  Both babies are healthy, appropriately sized on ultrasound, and Siddhary is doing well.  Four days later, on Tuesday, one baby has no heartbeat.  We do a C-section immediately and save the other baby - Indigo Phoebe Olsen, who is doing fine.  We don’t know what happened to the other baby, Scarlet. Same weight, alive four days earlier, no sign of trauma or illness or cord mishap, nothing.  Mystery.  We will always miss Scarlet. Honestly, that alone is enough to put me into a shell and to not even think about updating this page.

Less than a week later, my grandfather died.  Robert C. Olsen (the original, none of your cut-rate sequels).  Obviously I’m named after him (and my dad).  I could write (and have written) pages about what a great guy he was, great grandfather, and how much he and Grandma both meant to me… but you aren’t here to read that, I’m guessing.  Suffice to say that he was close and that it really hurt.

All of this on top of my one and only mother having major cancer de-bulking surgery about the same time.  It’s just body blow after body blow around here.  Losing Scarlet still hurts worse than anything has ever hurt me before. This last couple of months have been really hard, and unfortunately having the best Bama team ever doesn’t really compensate for losing my Scarlet.  I’d gladly watch ‘em go 0-12 just to get a chance to hold her and tell her hello…

… and life moves on, eventually.  It’s hard.  And even talking about it is hard.  There was a guy on one of the SEC forums who announced the birth of his twin girls, right after the BCSMNCG - and I just couldn’t say a thing to him.   What would I say?  How do I talk to the exhausted mom of new triplets?  I don’t want to rain on their parade, so I keep going and don’t talk about it.  Violet gets sad sometimes about baby Scarlet; we tell her it’s OK to be sad, and we are very fortunate to have baby Indigo, and she accepts that.  Must be nice to be four years old.  I don’t know what we’re going to tell Indy.  I think I’d freak right out if I was told I had a twin who died at birth.

We still have to do our Christmas shopping and gift manufacture.  We basically just took the month of December off.  Siddy’s not going back to work, I hated what that job did to her and her job doesn’t really pay enough to cover daycare for both girls anyway. Would have been even worse with twins. I’d have been fine with it, though.

But you know, my life isn’t JUST the sad shit.  Despite being a Gator in terms of geography and in terms of awarded degrees, I love Alabama football more than any other team in any other sport.  And there haven’t been many better seasons in which to be a Bama fan.  It makes me a bit of an outcast at work (where we almost all have degrees from UF) but beating the Gators in the SECCG was as rewarding as any game I’ve seen in years.  I’m still very bummed about Colt McCoy going down so early in the BCSMNCG, but the victory is sweet and stays crispy in milk.  14-0, SEC Champs over Gators, National Champs over Longhorns (and first ever victory over ‘em), first Heisman in Alabama history, most All-America selections by one team ever, most rushing yards for the season, most single-game rushing yards at Bryant-Denny… I’m sure there’s more, but this is easily the most-accomplished and most decorated Alabama squad ever.  Thank you, coach Saban.

My University of South Alabama Jaguars have finally gotten a football team; I went to their first game, a solid victory over Hargrave Military Academy.  Hey, first game isn’t going to be against Notre Dame, you know?  But they played and beat all the teams they had on their schedule this year, just like Boise State, so I’m going to rank USA #3.  Take that, Broncos.

As usual, there are recent photos at gallery.me.com/rco3 .  Always interested in hearing what you think about any of those photos, if one causes you to think something.

TeamSpeedKills, an SEC sports blog on SBNation, posted a roundup of yesterday’s news that included both mention of the passing of the University of Georgia’s bulldawg mascot, UGA VII, and (further down the same page) mention of some foolish-sounding title of a Klansman.  I didn’t follow the link to see what it was about, I refuse to give such people the attention they crave - but TSK, it should be pointed out, linked to it with specific derision in mind.   It occurs to me that this is the South: a study in contrasts.  We all care that a dawg died, even though it was the mascot of a team that most of us don’t like; but any news about some group of racist assholes who have been responsible for the murders of hundreds and thousands of human beings? That’s just business as usual.

Well, screw that.

There really isn’t anything else to say. I’m no Georgia fan, but I’d rather lose every single human being* who has even worn a Klan nightgown** than to lose a single UGA. I hope there are plenty of slow kitties there in heaven for you, UGA VII.

Next post will be something light and fluffy again, butterflies and rainbow and pretty pictures of busy little bees or something else.  Perhaps I’ll talk about who I’d rather have been on that plane that Stevie Ray… there’s plenty of former guitarists who are now just taking up chart space.

* benefit of the doubt

** Sadly, we already lost Cleavon Little, but Gene Wilder can stay. Blazing Saddles doesn’t count. I guess Harold and Kumar probably don’t, either.

Other photography news: I finally cashed in my D90 fund, which would have gone toward buying a D90 if I were going to buy a D90 but instead went toward adding three lenses and two extension tubes to my Mamiya collection.  I now proudly sport the 65mm, the 50mm ‘C’, the 127mm, and the 140mm Macro ‘C’, plus both the #1 and #2 extension tubes (45mm and 82mm, respectively).  The 50 is the most beat up, and is still a remarkably solid and massive lens.  The 65mm and 127mm both have more wear than the average Nikon lens ever sees, and the 140mm looks nearly new. None of these lenses look as if they have been affected AT ALL by this wear. Both extension tubes look as if they were brand flippin’ new, man.

Best of all, though, is that there was almost enough money in the D90 fund to get an Epson V750 flatbed scanner; close enough that I went ahead and bought it. This thing won’t replace a drum scanner for quality, but it’s about on par with a dedicated film scanner like a Nikon LS4000; I think that’s the model used in the comparison review I saw.  The Nikon might be a bit better, but it’s 3x the price and won’t handle larger than 120 film. Or opaque documents, either.

Of course, UPS saw fit to throw a delivery exception for my Saturday scanner delivery - my address doesn’t exist.  Ironically, it existed the previous day when I had TWO packages delivered - from UPS.  I’m still waiting to see if they try to deliver it today, or if I have to pick it up.  The folks on the phone can’t tell me.  Nice.

This is where we lived.  It’s where this site got its name.

I also went to the very first football game played by the University of South Alabama Jaguars.  They won. I may talk more about it later.

Clicking on either one of those images will take you to my MobileMe gallery for that set of images.  Copyright ©2009 Rob Olsen.  All rights reserved.  Happy to sell ‘em, though.