WORD is just another name for Nothing Left to Lose

WORD is an app. An app on my iphone and other peoples' phones and pods and pads. And an amuse-gueule* for people with an itch for word games and a nano-rush of adrenaline. Old scrabble heads who are looking for something to supplement scrabulous or lexulous love it. All you need is the app (free), a friend or 'friend' and a network. 

It's a crossword game like scrabble with a different board layout and somewhat different letter values. And it's fun. Especially if you win. I have three regular opponents: my son, a friend, and another friend with whom I play Word using a paid-for app where there are no pop-ups, worth the $ 2.50 or whatever it was, so you can home/hone in for the, um, kill without distractions.

On the free-app version you receive uninvited ads for finding new partners, disguising your voice with a death-rattle, playing new, transmogrified word games, tricking your girlfriend/boyfriend into responding to sexy siren stalkers, you name it. Ideal for some ADHD candidates, not so ideal for those pretending not to have ADHD. In any event, I have the habit. I do not invite unknowns for a match, but have played the odd game when invited. I know my opponents and have the occasional brief dialogue-SMSs incorporated into the body of the game. You can know if it's snowing in South Salem in an instant.

How u s e l e s s can this be? (I'm not referring to learning about snow in South Salem).
Well......quite. 
And that's the fun of it.  
It's useless, and it's naughty and fun to do something you know is useless, no money won or lost, gaming when you have nothing to lose but a few minutes (hours?) and your verbal-acrobatic pride.
- - - - -

*amuse-gueule: pre-appetizer tidbit usually offered up in fancier restaurants. Known more politely as amuse-bouche, as gueule is a coarse word for mouth. (Are the French the only ones to make a dirty word out of mouth? In the UK it's gob, but it doesn't have the impact of gueule).

Post-Photography Photography II

Choice. Sheer number in numeric, the capacity for teasing the image painlessly (and chemical-free)  from the most modest iphoto adjustment to trimming with iphone app to Adobe Pro photoshopping: transformative.
The darkroom is transformed: from chemical reactivity to virtual proactivity.

The long voyage from Brownie 616 through Kodak Starflash, Starmite,  Kodak Instamatic, a couple of simple 35 mm cameras, a couple of 35mm Nikkormat and Nikon reflex cameras with incorporated light meters.........and then the digital revolution in image-making. One of the technological trips of a lifetime.

We no longer fork over good money to a lab for Kodacolor lab prints; we can gear up our trusty HP with color cartridges. D.I.Y. printing lab. Or simply keep them on websites, memory chips, backup drives to be accessed at will.

So how do we take photographs now? With a different eye? in huge numbers, since cost is not an issue?  Greater ease behind the viewfinder? I think all of these.

Here's one of the thousands of azulejos in the Alhambra, taken with an iphone 4, (6 megapixels), a bit of adjustment of the glare on the right and slight increase in the virtual exposure:

This was dark in the wrong places and with far too little contrast. I was able to highlight the warm colors and add contrast without compromising foreground visibility.

In this photo of a keyhole door, a darkroom would probably have been better, but it's acceptable. I see I have to workshop it a bit more to eliminate the glare on both sides.

And below the simple joys of playing around with color and intensity, though they're not the best photos of Granada.

Rank amateur, but loving all of it!

Post-photography photography I

From many delicious extractable quotes in the politico- intellectual 1969 work by Susan Sontag On Photography, this one clarifies one of the reasons taking photographs can be reassuring:

 “The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery (from http://www.scribd.com). 

I don't agree with Sontag that it denies interconnectedness, but it does atomize our reality, and we love photography for this fragmentation, for the disassembling of what we can experience as the chaotic and relentless whoosh of time. And the fixing of an instant.

We slow down, we stand still in the moment. The shutter-eye blinks in the scene before us.
We have observed what there was in that moment and we have incorporated it into the memory of our tiny disk. In our unique way we possess the scene, we can pretend we own the vision.

Thoughts with photos

 Last year I wrote about turning 65, but this January I slinked past 66 without incident. No bells whistles or tantrums. This may explain the extended silence after the boisterous Swiss Miss blog (http://lexieintrator.blogspot.fr/2012/12/alpine-airhead.html).
Looking inward, meditating? Je recule pour mieux sauter. 

Well not really; I've been otherwise engaged (life happens).

I've missed the blogger's high, and want it back again.

Born to blog. My little mark in the sands....
Also born to procrastinate.

Born to do a lot of things, including nothing in particular, which I believe is a very human thing to be doing.


Here I am sitting in a café at high altitude finishing coffee, a snow bunny with sunglasses for cover. I pretend I'm in my thirties and on a break from the off-piste powder. My son has opportunistically taken iphone in hand and 5-megapixelled me. My face is mercifully in shadow, outglared by snow.

It is not typical of me to pose as I'm more comfortable on the other side of the lens, but here I pose.

Below, me as a dalmatian, and the whole menagerie from the running club for visually impaired---about to run in the Escalade Marmite Race in December.



 Since the last blog I've been fortunate enough to visit friends and take photos with the trusty iphone in Barcelona. Photos from the Barcelona museum where huge mummers' masks used in processionals are on display:

Big Bird

Pury with outsized characters

Window-shopping in the old town:  colors and shapes.

                

She was warning me not to take pix....

Hams are prepared, decorated and displayed with lights and pride

..............

And then it's back to cats and snow....winter's long vigil.

Well it's been awhile, but I'm back with a bang:  a clever, sobering imaginary dialogue by Laura de Weck, in Das Wohl der Kinder, published in the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger on 18 December 2012.  Translated by Kevin Cook and reproduced here with permission. .

Adoption policies and discrimination based on sexual orientation in a certain country we know........
Here goes.

Child welfare

Maria

Woman

Man

Maria goes to the adoption centre for an interview. Sitting at the table are a woman and a man.

Maria: Good morning.

Woman + man: Good morning.

Maria: I’d like to enquire about adoption, as I’d very much like to bring up a child and give it loving care, as if it was my own child.

Woman: Right, well here’s this leaflet....

Maria: And... I love women, and I’ve been told things aren’t done the same way here as in Spain, where I come from.

Man: Oh, right, I see.... Would you like to begin?

Woman: No, you explain it to her.

Man: Right, well... In this country a woman who loves a man and is married to him can adopt a child and give it loving care....

Woman: .... and a woman who doesn’t love either a man or a woman and isn’t married to anyone can also adopt a child and give it loving care.

Man: And a woman who loves a woman can also adopt a child and give it loving care. Only she mustn’t love her partner too much, because if she marries her partner or has their relationship officially registered, she can’t adopt a child or give it loving care.

Woman: So, basically, if a woman loves a woman and they both want to care for a child, they shouldn’t mention that they love each other. As individuals, both Woman 1 and Woman 2 can adopt a child and give it loving care. But the law says that Woman 1 and Woman 2 can’t adopt the same child and give it loving care, because there are those who say the child would then not get enough loving care.

Man: And of course the same applies to men.

Woman: In this country we have equal rights.

Man: But last week the government very generously decided that a woman who loves a woman and has their relationship officially registered can adopt a child and give it loving care, as long as it’s her stepchild and the father is....

Woman: ....dead....

Man: ....or in jail....

Woman: ....or unknown....

Man: ....or on drugs....

Woman: ....or a pet....

Man: No, that’s different....

Woman: Oh, right.

Man: But to sum up: 1. You can adopt a child with your partner as long you don’t marry her and you bear the responsibility alone. 2. You can marry a transsexual who’s a man before the wedding and a woman after the adoption. In that case both the marriage and the child will be recognised. In fact, that’s really the only way for a gay couple in Switzerland to be married with equal rights. 3. You can adopt a child with your partner if it’s a child of your own. So you have a child of your own, but then you must....

Woman: ....kill the father....

Man: ....or get him jailed....

Woman: ....or have him registered as unknown....

Man: ....or get him onto drugs....

Woman: In other words, the adoption must be conducive to the child’s welfare.

Man: And, according to Swiss law and the Swiss government, the child’s welfare is best served if the child is brought up by one woman rather than two.

Woman: Because, according to Swiss law and the Swiss government, women who love women....

Man: ....and men who love men....

Woman: ....do not love in as reliable, child-friendly, full, devoted, responsible a way as women who love men....

Man: ....or men who love women.

Woman: The whole point is love.

Man: Which is strictly screened for every adoption, straight or gay.

Man: But tell me, how are things done in Spain?

Pause

Maria: In Spain, anyone who loves can adopt a child.