A couple hours working on a new Oakland Miscellaneous section on artandlife (the marathon photographs) before my computer crapped out (getting it back was a task), so I said the hell with it, took a break and hopped a bus downtown to pick up an April bus pass. No complaints. They dropped routes and changed schedules yesterday throughout the system because of the current financial mess, but my downtown bus not only survived, it was upped from two to three trips an hour with the old folks monthly tickets holding at $20. Hup! Hup!

I should have expected the rain as I was out walking but didn't get all that wet (the camera no more than damp), the sky still overcast now at two in the afternoon. I'll finish the artandlife page and post it later (actually I'll post it here before I finish), so that's good. I'm ambivalent about the photographs themselves, not sure they're all worth putting up, although I think I've finally sorted out my attitude about it.

It's my site, it chronicles the day to day photography (at least the better shots, everything on artandlife is posted here first) and I don't need to worry over “is this good enough to post or not”? If I like it, if it talks to me (even in a whisper), then stop, stop the dumb internal dialogue and put it up. It's not a commercial site, I'm not a commercial photographer, I only have my own ego to coddle and keep. If it were a commercial site and I was after clients, then life (and artandlife) would be different. So good. It's settled. I'm settled. (Hup! Hup!)

You'd think this “is this picture good enough, is it not?” would be a no-brainer, but I've been turning over adding photographs to my Here In Oakland site. It's just sitting there, gathering dust, a place marker at the moment, but I've been thinking of posting photographs of Oakland store fronts and such, buildings that interest me enough to take a picture, but I've had these stupid second thoughts because, well, maybe they wouldn't be “interesting” enough, “artsy” enough. Interesting enough? Artsy enough? To whom? Who's taking the pictures, pray tell? I'm a (bus) card carrying cranky old fart, I can do pretty much as I please while I'm still able to get a camera up. (Hup! Hup!)

Sounds like a sermon.

And I'm the target flock. I hear but don't listen.

Later. Late afternoon. Time for a bath. Nothing on TV. In the past I've been able to watch EastEnders, a British series that plays on a local Public Television Station Mondays and Tuesdays, but find, after watching these last months, that every character with the exception of one or two, is a low life scum bag who belongs in a gaol. Not just bad, but scum bag bad. Low down dirty down scum bag bad. Nasty. I guess that's the whole idea, ratchet up the tension, but these people are low down varmints, surprising to this old sot in seeing the distance they'll travel to screw, rob and sodomize friends and compatriots.

Double-cross? Triple-cross? Hell, both before breakfast. And the one or two “decent” characters are clueless. To get taken so many times by so many people you'd have to be clueless, but then again, what do I know? This series has been running for twenty-five years on British television and I can't watch it anymore. Better to say can't watch it than take it, can't take it implying I've lost my grit, can no longer stand face to the wind. I mean, we're talking television here. Well, maybe that's it: I can no longer take the strain, just another soap fatality along life's lonely road.

Please stop.

Along life's lonely road? If they can dish it out, then I can dish it back. On Mondays. All day long.