(Sagan's talking about a picture of Earth taken by the Voyager probe. The photo was taken from the edge of the Solar System. In a very grainy photo, Earth is a small speck on a grainy black landscape.)

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

And then everyone was inspired to do more, to do better, etc.

I nearly crapped myself. Hokey Flav samples aside this seems solid.

Camden Aquarium kind of pales in comparison to Baltimore's, but that might be an unfair comparison since I went on a Saturday and I was at the Baltimore Aquarium on a Thursday. It was really crawling with kids and people in general, and it seemed like you could never really take your time to look at things because there was always a HUGE crowd behind you. On the other hand they had seals and penguins who were somehow totally ok with being outside on such a hot and humid day.

I actually didn't do much else to celebrate my birthday; and then yesterday I cried my eyes out towards the end of What Dreams May Come (and being saps there was a whole bunch of OH GOD I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU TOO B'AWWWWWing), but didn't do much else until 6 in the evening when we finally decided to pick up the ingredients for dinner, which was then had at like 9 or so.

Overall it was pretty good, I got to accomplish what I had set out to do in the first place, which was basically "do absolutely nothing".

I'd say I had a good weekend, even though I got little to nothing done. I'm not ashamed of that, but I'm not going to be all BWA HA HA SO PROUD OF MYSELF about it either. There are photos that need to be put up, calories to be burned, aquariums to research, and so on. There are things to do that I have put off.

NEXT WEEKEND I GET OLD.

Honestly I'm not sure what's dumber, this whole "them black folks are gonna change the club's complexion" thing (I mean really if it's about capacity then why'd you take in day campers in the first place), or the kid who decided it was a GREAT IDEA to build a tunnel in beach sand. That's some engineering fail.

Although I will now remember to somehow fit in a "am i threatening to change this establishment's complexion" joke in conversations.

Cagayake!Girls is stuck in my head. Kind of funny, since I'm playing some Rock Band tonight, apparently. And drinking. Yeah, drinking!

Let me just get this out of my system real quick: OH MY GOSH HEATHER ARMSTRONG'S NEW DAUGHTER IS ADORABLE. Congratulations to them. And, yes, Marlo is a cool name.

Meanwhile:

Upon further review, my "preview" set might have been most of the good shots I took at AnimeNext, after all. I was sorting through the rest today and was a little disappointed to notice a few trends:

• Flash reflections in the glass. That's not so bad when it's a bare flash or if it's snooted, but when the umbrella is on it's kind of hard to miss.
• Related to the previous item, I used the same location(s) 3 or 4 times. That's a lack of imagination and initiative, on my part.
• When I try to rush something, I end up not paying attention to certain details. Stray hairs. Badges. Things in the background. Improper exposure (this one's tricky since the LCD screen bumps up the brightness; also still slightly confused by histograms).
• Same pose, different angle.
• Wide-angle shots with nothing really interesting to hold your attention
• Off-center landscape-oriented shots are sort of overused

But that doesn't mean they're all terrible pictures; I think there are still a bunch that are pretty good. It's really more of just seeing all of these pictures at once and seeing all those little things I could've done better, drives me up the wall.

Some photos.

Lots more, I estimate 570 all in all, including test shots and botched exposures (meaning even with 570 pictures i might end up with...50 good ones? IDK). SLOG SLOG SLOG. In the meantime, comments and criticism are always appreciated.

So you've got this:


and then you've got this, and now I don't know much about records, but "18 inch mix" sounds to me like a LONG time. Enjoy!


GAH IT'S STUCK IN MY HEAD

Got a sneaking suspicion I'm going to feel like I don't have enough time to devote to any one thing tomorrow (today)

OHHHHHH my god.

My lighting kit is here. Guess I'll have to play with it at work, somehow.

3 DAYS TO MASTER IT, HAHAHA THIS IS GOING TO KILL

Does anyone reading this have any personal experience with HIIT workouts? I'm thinking about giving it a shot, especially if it's supposed to keep your muscles working (thus burning fat, etc) long after you've left the gym.

So I just saw Carson Daly shooting a Beretta; he looked like he knew what he was doing, too.
Suddenly he's not such a boring guy.

N.A.S.A's Spirit of Apollo not only has a silly album cover, but also some of the weirder collaborations I've heard of.

Tom Waits
and
Kool Keith.

YYY's Karen O
and
Ol' Dirty Bastard.

Surprised myself by going to bed before midnight. Surprised myself even more by waking up at 6:45 feeling alright and ready to face the day. Was surprised when I recieved a call telling me I don't have to be on location until 9:45.

ON THE OTHER HAND it is already Wednesday and I still haven't found anyone to cover my Sunday shift.

Very hard, and then rolls around a bit.
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Can't seem to form coherent paragraphs or even sentences detailing what I've been up to lately. Guess it's a good thing I don't blog for a living.
Took to rolling my own cigarettes over the weekend. Tiny hands seem better suited to tiny papers. Resisting the urge to make one or light one up this week, have a big airsoft game coming on the 24th and want to get at least a little healthier by then. Haven't found someone to work my shift at work, though. Could be a problem :|

Can't wait to see my gear again, since my friend Charles has had it since AUSA. Said everything was working fine and even test-fired the rifle without a problem. Looking forward to running around in the woods and yelling (or shooting) at people and generally starring in an unfilmed war movie.

This music's repetitive as all hell (and some may find the footage towards the end a little jarring, idk), but for some reason I like it a lot.

Heheheheh. Rick Ross. Hustlin' is such a great track, sorry.
(dear god touch-screen typing suuuuuucks)