“The simple fact of the matter is that the Pope is trying to eat my brain via a remote hookup in my pillows”
That was how I started my day here at the office. Billy was sure that the “Papal Zombie Conspiracy” was active in his building and trying to devour his grey matter to ensure the future of the “Pope Child” a simian hybrid with the soul of the “Greatest Popes and Pop singers” in it. Billy’s brain containing the soul of John Lennon.
“Sure Man, whatever you say. Just keep your helmet on at night and you’ll be safe Man. Just keep the strap on tight, okay?” I passed him a large coffee from the place on the corner, with the hot Greek girl at the counter. Billy took the cup and drained the first half between sentences.
“It’s a fact Man, the Popes are gonna rule the world if I don’t keep my brain safe from their nozzles Man!” he swayed back on his chair, smoothing his hair and poking through it to check for new holes. “It’s the world Man! I’m saving the world!” He sat up straight and motioned over my shoulder.
My boss, the ever-cheerful ‘Mitzi’ Mitchell Fallon walked by us, smiling and patting Billy on the shoulder. I nodded a quiet hello and let him pass. The last thing I wanted in the morning was pep-talk from Mitzi the cheerleader from hell. There are morning people and there are night people, that’s the way of the world, right? Mitzi is an ANYTIME person, always on and always up for anything. Good for parties, shitty in a boss.
Mitzi caught my eye and stopped. “shit” I thought. “Hey Boss, how are things today?” I asked, hoping for a brief “Great”
Mitzi paused as if in thought and then grinned broadly; “Great! Things are great, you guys have the project in line, I woke up bright and early and watched the sunrise with James and we hit the gym for about an hour BEFORE work! Not even the Good Morning America guys were up yet! You know?”
He paused for a breath and Billy cut in: “hey, speaking of the project, let’s get down to it Man.”
I gave a curt nod to Mitzi and spun around in my chair to face the computer and get to work on “The Project”.
“The Project” is a seven months long refresh of the code behind our flagship website, moving it to modern versions of the scripts and taking advantage of new technology to make the site run faster and look a bit hipper for the marketing guys. The Project had been initiated by Mitzi as a side project but had become our primary function at the five month mark when it was clear that management wanted the site brought up to speed. “Wow Factor” was used alot in the meetings about the whole deal a few months back. So now Billy and I spent all day recoding and testing the back end to make sure that we could drop in in place and let the front-end guys work out the visual part of things.
Mitzi loved to get his hands into the mix but was so busy with department business that he couldn’t focus on it. Which suited Billy and I fine as it justified long hours and overtime for “consultation” at the local bars. Two hour Lunches are fine as long as when we came back we had notes about how were were going to overcome a problem at the end of the day. Sweet deal.
After about an hour or so of toying with conversions from old CGI pages to a single ASP I’d finally had enough work for the morning and stood up to walk to go to the break room. Billy snagged my arm as I left the cubicle and hissed in my ear “hey man, don’t forget that thing.”
I looked back at my desk and squatting on my keyboard was a fleshy pink miniature version of the former Pope, John Paul II.
“Bless you my son,” it squeaked at me, and made an air cross in my direction.
Billy shrieked and ran to the other side of the cubes, peering over the wall at the miniature pontif with obvious terror. He stretched his arm over the seperator and squelched “get that thing outta here, man”. He shrunk behind the seperator and began to hyperventilate loudly.
I tentatively reached for the squat holy man and snatched him from my keyboard. Gingerly, I carried the tiny Pope with me to the Break Room and deposited him on the counter while I made coffee and considered my next move. The Pope wandered around the counter space and alternatively blessed and condemned the various condiments and implements of coffee there. I sipped some bitter coffee and watched as the mini pope removed his tiny trousers and began to “water” the plants.
“Bless you my children” he squeaked.
I briefly considered dropping the tiny (but Supreme) former Pontiff in the disposal and just forgetting him; but my alter boy training stood in the way and reminded me that even miniature popes could damn my soul for eternity. Agnosticism be damned when you’re faced to face with a living, breathing dashboard prophet.
Snatching the pantless pontiff from the counter and walking down the hall to Human Resources, I left the Supreme Miniature Vox Deo in the hands of one of the HR A-As, I had left the last one with her and she was starting to build a collection.
Mitzi caught me on the way back to my desk, “I hear that we sprouted another Catholic Icon.” He grinned around giant capped teeth and walked along with me to my desk. Billy sat staring at his monitor, tapping away at a chunk of code, not acknowledging that I had returned. “Have you called the exterminator about these things?”
“No Man,” Billy coughed, “They just keep popping up, they’re after my brain man!”
“Well, we should get you a helmet or something Billy” Mitzi said, “I would hate to see you lose your brain to a miniature Pope Benedict the 9th he’d try to sell it.”
Mitzi cackled and wandered off to his office.
“Billy, you wanna go get some Vitamin B?”
“The Bar? Yeah. Lemmie finish up this line of code and we’ll tag out”
At the Bar Billy moped over a pint and snacked on some peanuts. It was obvious that another Pope had appeared somewhere and he wasn’t saying where. He had probably killed it or something in a panic. Billy was a strict pacifist and the idea of killing a religious figure of any size must have hurt him deeply.
“Bro, do you wanna talk about it?” I asked, putting a hand on his shoulder for a second.
“No, Man. I don’t, I want to never have to talk about it at all, Man. You know? I want Popes to be guys on the TV or in parades, not little elves that hang around my bedroom at night and piss on my plants to bless them. I caught one of them blessing my cereal this morning, you know? Killed him with my shoe, I think it was Pope Pius.” He sniffed a bit, and wiped his eyes. Billy grabbed his pint in both hands and lifted it over his head, pouring it over his dirty blond hair and black t-shirt. Soaking his jeans in the process.
“Two more” I motioned to the Bartender.
Back at the office, Billy was sullen but threw himself back into the Project. We were done for the day before he looked up from his screen to wave goodbye. I nodded a goodbye and wandered out of the office and into the street, stooping to catch a 6 inch tall Pope John Paul the 2nd on the way out.
Thomas Hawk and SF MOMA or Why I Love my a530
Published by NiteMayr on August 12, 2008I love taking photos, I think Thomas Hawk does too; so it pained me to see that he was being harassed for doing what he loves. This has led to some discussion online. I will carefully highlight that it pained me in the past tense, because I am not going to defend either party over here at Local Blogger; it’s not for me to do. I’m not party to either side of the discussion, save as a photographer, but I’m no professional and cannot fully understand all of the motives and methods that Thomas employs. Nor am I SF MOMA, large as I can appear, I am no Modern Art Museum, nor am I the curator or an officer of any establishment save the “Kevin Wardrop Museum of Comics and Toys” which has fallen apart as of late, due to my lax administration. No, I am Kevin Wardrop, Geek. So I will try to draw a balance in my commentary on all of this.
First some assumptions:
If where you work is covered by CCTV, then being photographed should not be a problem. As I understand things; the reason Thomas was approached was because an employee of the Museum was uncomfortable with the lens of the Camera being on her, possibly pointed down her blouse. I can’t see why it matters, honestly. If you are under the lens of a CCTV for 90% of your day, you have had your privacy exploited by a security person at least once or twice this week. They might not post your picture on the web or sell it to a magazine; but chances are they might. Why stress over a photographer, at least you can approach them and ask for a card or ask where they might be using the picture.
Buildings built with public money and funded by donation have no right to restrict photography; that being said the SF MOMA is a private not-for-profit entity. Which means that they can restrict behavior within their walls. Period. If they want the negative publicity from ejecting photographers, that’s within their rigths, up until a limit. Obviously, they can’t be overtly discriminatory against any paying customer.
People assume (wrongly) that a SLR or dSLR means that you are a professional (or a pervert); I don’t get hassled to often when I go out with my Camera, even when I have the 300mm zoom lens on. I do get the occasional dirty look though; even “remote hassles” but no in your face confrontations. If I am close enough, I ask for permission to take photos, but often I like to take candid photos where people don’t know and are unaware of me. It’s life that I’m photographing, not poses. To defend myself from the pervert discussion I usually have my family with me when I take photos; people see my daughter and assume that I’m a tourist (which suits me fine). I assume the same when I see some dude with a kit lens on his far too expensive dSLR too. To assuage fears I also carry Moo Cards with my name and contact info on them so that people can feel assured that I am not some pervert looking to exploit their image; which then leads to “are you going to sell these?” I’m not a professional, I would like to make money while taking pictures; but I don’t. Thomas does; which changes the equation slightly. If I was a professional and known for my work, I imagine that some people might be aware that I make money off of these photos and should be careful to make sure that I am sensitive to these beliefs when approached by members of the public or worse an authority figure.
As I stated earlier, I wasn’t on hand for Thomas’s encounter and have to go on Thomas’ word and those of other “witnesses” (who may be sock puppets for SF MoMa for all I know); it looks like there was a misunderstanding and miscommunication that led to misanthropy on the both parts. As a public figure, Thomas should have shown a bit more humility and less self-assurance and simply backed down; Simon, for his part appears to have been overzealous in his defense of his employee/co-worker. I believe we should chalk this up to misunderstanding and walk away from it. Mr. Blint may have acted like an asshole; but Thomas should be aware that on Private property, the authority lies with the Janitors before it lies with the visitors.
(I use janitors here as an example of the lowest paid employee or at least least authoritative, not as some statement of their position in society, Janitors are FAR more important than CEOs in the scope of things)
Had Thomas been carrying a point and shoot; would he have faced as much hassle? All of the signs here point to no; and a short perusal of the discussions of this matter seem to confirm the phenomenon. People with “good” cameras are hassled where people with “crappy pos” cameras are given free reign. Why?
Let’s look at my assumptions again; people with dSLR cameras are looked at as either Professionals or Perverts. In this case, it was Pervert. Almost always wrong, almost always incorrect, but there it is. People who are willing to pout money into something like photography are faced with suspicion, where people who just pay a couple hundred bucks for their little pocket camera are treated like “benign dummies” you can see that in the way people who are hassled talk about the phenomena. “I had my big Camera… but people with cell phone cameras and little point and shoots were getting a pass”
Clearly there is a kind of class division of photographers that Thomas (and others) have fallen afoul of. It’s a shame that the proliferation of dSLRs hasn’t removed the stigma of the “big” camera over the the “fun” little camera. That, however leads me back to my initial point.
As I understand things, Ansel Adams, who is often held up as a standard in photography didn’t have any of the technology that we have on hand today, and that all of his work was technique and style over equipment and luck. I am forced to admit that I don’t take (for the most part) any better photos with my 800 dollar kit than I take with my a530. If I take my time and plan it out, my a530 can produce some amazing results, un retouched and uncropped, and it doesn’t set off any warning bells in the minds of most people. It fits in my pocket and is ready in a few seconds. Nothing could be easier, simpler and more prone for abuse. I can easily use my “little” camera to snap candid photos with no one being the wiser, I can control exposure and flash with one hand and don’t even need to put it to my eye to compose a shot. I love my a530 simply because it is unobtrusive and easy to use. If anything, people should fear a compact camera more than a big camera because a silent and easy to hide Camera is much more easily used to take surreptitious and exploitive photos than a large camera is.
In the end, it’s not the equipment that defines how a photographer should be judged, its what they do with it, and from what I can tell, Thomas did no wrong with the Camera, but his mouth might have become over exposed.