You really cannot take this seriously.

After seminar this evening, Ben, visiting from Toronto, and I joined my classmates at the pub for beers.

During our conversation, the Albertan at our table brought up her childhood experience of seeing a tornado nearby her home. Depending on how long you've known me, you've probably heard the St. Peter EF3 tornado epic at least once. For unfortunate souls like svairini, maatnofret, and saraewing, they've heard it at least a dozen times. Tonight took on a chilling twist.( Read more... )

It nearly goes beyond words to unearth this almost thirteen years later and see that it mirrors verbatim what I saw. But even this is tamer than the moment when everything went completely mad. Now I really want to know in which car the credited photographer was sitting. If he was driving that white car, then he has some explaining to do.

From memory, I can count about nine different CD issues and re-issues since Island Records produced CID126 for West Germany in 1985. CID126 was the only correct edition, in my opinion, and I've listened to my long-out-of-print CD ever since I found it still in an import bin in early 1991. All the re-issues since — Japanese CD edition 1986, Island-Polygram 1990, ZTT 1994, Island-Universal 1997/8, Repertoire 1999, the CD + DVD limited edition of 2003, the SACD 2004 re-issue — they were all wrong, all detracting from the original content, either through remixed editions prepared at around the same time for alternate markets (North American) or for packaging limitations (vinyl LP). Each re-issue came with that terrible letdown of "Why did you clowns bother?"

But this week, thanks to a tip from my friend in the forever awesome music group LMP, a proper 25th anniversary release of my all-time favourite album ever made, Propaganda's A Secret Wish, was announced and just put to sale.

At long last, hallelujah: THEY GOT IT RIGHT. Buy this as if your life depended on it.

By this, the original 9-track CD album (the fabled CID126 — that is, a product number — edition) has been restored for the first time since 1985. This was technically referred to as the "analogue recording." And oh my lord, it sounds astounding. It sounds like things that words haven't yet been made to describe. It is so much improved that I can still hear new elements within the music that I have never heard before in a thousand listenings. It is so good that you can undoubtedly make out synthesizer oscillations! ( I'll explain how and why in the mini-review )

So it's a dual-disc edition, and I'm obviously ordering a copy for my library. If a limited edition, audiophile quality vinyl production of this is made available, I will buy that, too, as probable as there will continue to be oxygen on this planet.

In the meantime, I'm listening to a "preview" from the internets, and it is truly without peer, oh my god. I haven't smoked in seven years, but once this ends, I'll be looking for a cigarette. It is truly that much better — even to ears that have heard this album north of a thousand times since the first time a co-worker friend in October 1990 lent me a copy of the 90288-2 U.S. Island CD version to preview. This was back when I was raving on end about Propaganda's 1990 reformation LP called 1234 that most Propaganda obsessives won't even dignify with their precious breath (mostly because Claudia Brücken had long since moved on to Act and to her solo work, while Ralf Dörper and Susanne Freytag only made brief cameos, leaving Michael Mertens to his own devices to assemble a "new" Propaganda with ex-members of Simple Minds and vocalist Betsi Miller. It was a critical and commercial disaster, though I still like it). My friend thought I could use a shakeup and made me listen to ASW.

Good move, Eric — wherever you are now.

What with Monday's termination announcement of Kodak's oldest colour film (as well as the world's first and oldest colour film dating back to 1935), it is something sad, but not unexpected to hear. It was a complex, 14-step development process which could never be done at your local corner photo lab. And unlike every other colour film ever made by anyone, it was actually a triple-layer black and white film sensitized to red, green, and blue. The complementing three hues were added to the film during the development process. All other colour films, by contrast, have the colour dyes put in when the film is made, and those dyes are what react with light when the picture is taken. That triple-layer feature of Kodachrome is why it was able to give special definition to certain colours — particularly reds, browns, blues, and yellows. It was particularly forgiving to all skin hues and was probably best known for the 1985 National Geographic magazine cover featuring an Afghan girl who was refugeed during the war between the Soviets and the Afghani mujahideen.

The other great thing about Kodachrome is its ability to not fade over time. Kodachromes shot in the early 1940s still look like they were shot last week. Each snapshot, like those shot in 1942, becomes an ineffable time capsule.

I only began shooting Kodachrome in 2008, although my dad shot a lot of it when I was little. I came to know Kodachrome from the Kodak Carousel slide shows we'd look through as a family when I was about 8 or so. I think the last time we did one of those after-dinner summertime slide shows was a year or two after we went to Colorado on a road trip (which was July 1980 during the epic heat wave that killed nearly everything). But my own introduction to Kodachrome was delayed by about ten years: in 1997 and early 1998, when I started shooting, the local camera shop where I bought my camera tried to steer me away from Kodachrome (and succeeded), because they said it took time to develop (they mailed it out) and was "difficult to work with". So I believed them and stayed away from it. In other words, I went ahead and started shooting mostly colour slide film from about April 1998 anyway, even though they tried to get me to use colour negative film (which I quickly came to dislike).

So when I realized how endangered Kodachrome was (only one place in the world was processing it) and saw the way it reproduced colour, I started buying rolls of it in batches from auctions online. I am continually amazed by the way it renders colour in the way my eye actually saw that colour. It is a rendering that I cannot replicate with any other film, and certainly not with any digital camera. It also has what is called a high acutance — or sharpness at the edges of objects — that is not seen with digital imaging (which, being a traditionalist, is not "photography" as there is no "graph"). Looking at the film itself, such as in front of a light, is a treat that cannot be described adequately in words.

So here are a few of my faves that were shot between March 2008 and August 2008. I have several, but I'll keep it to a handful or so. I have other shots going right up through yesterday, the day Kodak announced the end of Kodachrome, but they have yet to be either processed or scanned. Incidentally, 45-year-old rangefinder camera was loaded with Kodachrome when I walked at convocation last week; my dad, who flew here to see it, was using a camera, too: a Kodak digital point-and-shoot.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

( Kodachromic )

Sent to me by my oldest friend, who is now a teaching assistant at university and encumbered with marking frosh term papers. She didn't come across this one, but apparently someone else was endowed with that distinction. And they ran with it by making a Flash movie out of it a la Stick Figure Theatre.

I dedicate this to everyone in my life who has dealt with malignancy and are giving the finger to cancer at every step of the way, and to my aunt, who died of breast cancer in 2000:

Subject: FW: What it's like reading, or listening to me complain about reading, freshman comp papers
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:03:36 -0600
To: salinworld@krn7yoqa3.ct

Wylie forwarded this to me after a friend sent it to him. I second his original subject line, although I pointed out to him that this student may be a non-native speaker, whereas our students produce the same quality of work without that excuse. (And yes, I really do get papers this bad. Not all of them, of course. But some.)

Here's the original paper:
http://www.blackroses.com/~skip/tower/mphtower.com/videos/cancer.pdf

And here's where some clever person animated it:
http://www.mphtower.com/videos/cancer.html

That second link requires sound (and possibly some sort of animation plug-in, ie flash, but I'm not sure about that) and lasts several minutes. But it's quite funny--especially the conclusion.