Thinking About: Responsibility

"I love the people of America. It's the government I hate. Tell the American people that we received their gift. The missile that they gave to Israel - we have received it, and this is the result," he says, motioning to the coffins."

- Shiite sheik in Tyre, Lebanon, reported on cnn.com

Saturday Morning

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Maybe Grandma should have helped a little less with the Geometry homework and a little more with the Spelling...

Summer Reading: Delicious Words

They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

- Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Photo Gallery: Anonymous - Los Angeles

I was driving around the city today imagining myself taking important pictures of things. It was a nice daydream and at some point I'd like to do something about it. But I was having trouble finding important things anywhere along San Fernando Road. It's a good place to go to drop off your Fed Ex packages or to buy large quantities of metal shavings, but otherwise I don't recommend it.

I noticed some buildings, blank, only the street address on the front. Of course, I've watched enough Michael Mann movies to assume that this meant that there was probably something irregular going on inside. Why else would you start a business, but not tell anyone the name? I hope my assumption is incorrect, because there are a lot of these blank buildings in the vicinity of San Fernando Road and I'd like to believe that the world is a better place than that.

But, anyway, I started taking pictures of them, partly because they worried me and partly because I was curious (which, by the way, are the two reasons I take most of my pictures). Also, I think Los Angeles is like this: disconnected, broken down, anonymous. 10 million people with 10 million cars. And if I get a horsehead in my bed, you'll know I photographed the wrong store front. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the results of my afternoon drive...

Water Of Life

Dear Friend, Go Easy

Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over
Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends
The body is put back in the same ground it came from
The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.

It's all smoke, nothing but smoke.

But regarding anything beyond this, dear friend, go easy. There's no end to the publishing of books, and constant study wears you out so you're no good for anything else. The last and final word is this:

Fear God.
Do what he tells you.

- from Ecclesiastes 12, The Message

Living Room

Happy 4th Of July. Do yourself a favor: get off your couch and go somewhere. I'd recommend some pub somewhere to watch the Beautiful Game.

The photo was taken yesterday, somewhere in the Mojave desert.

California Is Weird

The only point in buying a house like this is to live in it for as short a time as possible before selling it to make a crapload of money because that's what people do in this state. This is a pretty sad way to live if you ask me, but then again, I don't have any house at all so what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means: it means that when I'm old and gray, I'll be living in a cardboard box. But at least I won't have lived in a concrete prison in the middle of the desert. Life is full of contradictions.