I am quite capable of reading the blogs of any my friends who blog using any given set of popular blogging tools in a convenient manner without having to make a daily round trip of hundreds of sites, thanks to the magic of RSS readers. I use net netnewswire, others just use google reader or bloglines or some windows desktop app or other.

All of said alternative blogging tools offer, or can be set up with various privacy options. In fact, LJ is a bit stunted in it’s privacy tools, because it doesn’t allow authentication to enable reading of locked posts via RSS.

If LJ goes away (and despite the links posts that I have coming up later in the day, I am a long way from believing it will, and certainly not overnight, although the service might get a bit shoddier) then I will still be able to read and comment on the writings of any of my friends who care to set themselves up with any one of a number of free services in a a manner just as convenient as reading my LJ friends page.

Which is another way of saying: breathe the fuck out, everyone. There is no need to start screaming yet.

Or, in one sentence: the net interprets damage as censorship, and routes around it.

This is hardly the most original photo project in the world, but it’s something I think would be fun to do, and I want something a bit structured to force me to undertake a bit more photography this year, and realistically a 365 days type project is just setting myself up for a fail.

So, I live in this flat, see. And right outside my door, there is a bus stop.

So, I have these friends, see. And many of them like to dress up in interesting clothes and makeup. Fetishwear, LARP, cosplay, furries, goth gear, punk rock mohawks and ripped clothes, or even just really sharp suits. Not the sort of thing that one sees every day at a bus stop, anyway.

So the plan is: people turn up to my place at some mutually convenient time, with their chosen outfit and any required makeup, and I take two very similar pictures of them at the bus stop. One without makeup and in ordinary clothes – jeans and t-shirt, or whatever you’ve got as everyday wear that is distinct from the other look, and one all done up in their finery.

I am, of course likely to take rather more than two photos, as I attempt to get a shot I like.

Participants would receive my grateful thanks, tea/coffee/soft drinks and biscuits, and a full rez electronic copy of the published photos in whatever format they would like.

So, would anyone be interested in this?

ETA: The bus stop is quite a busy and public one, which is part of the appeal, that there is context for people to stand out of.

I will attempt to minimise the amount of time outdoors in more unusual attire for anyone who is uncomfortable with the idea of being in public in their finery, and to schedule times when there are likely to be less people about – evenings and suchlike. Plus, you will be accompanied by bloke-with-serious-looking-camera, which in my experience will provide context that will make anyone that might see you in your outfit suddenly become terrible blase about the whole thing.

Well, that’s a spike put in one of the shittier weeks of my life.

Themesong:

“We walk but once among the living,
So no regrets and no forgiving
Hard to dance when you’re down upon your knees”

I have a week off work, and I intend to decompress like a motherfucker. And also tidy up. And dance.

And now, back to work.

For your consideration: The Good Doctor, writing in 1972:

The pools also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states.

Well… maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves: finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government”, is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end?

– Hunter S Thompson, September 1972

A new Flipron album.

“Success is the sum of a lot of little things done correctly.” – Fernand Point, Ma Gastronomie.

So you all will, too.

And I suspect that he’ll either have already heard, or be distracted by that new lass that moved in with him the other week, but today’s exciting music news is that The Paradise Motel have reformed and a new album is due at some point soon.