Messing Around With Pixlr X and Fastcut and This is What I Got

I had a bunch of old photo that I never threw away but didn't know what to do with them. Time marched on and I have Fastcut on my computer and access to the newer quick photo editor Pixlr X.




Now, the thing is that bothers me is that I had limited input. I did pick the photos.

I changed some of the aspect ratios, rotated or colored the images.

But the animation is based on the music. Change the music and you have a different animation style and effects. That can render a different video each and every time.

Still, I can see some uses for this and I am delighted that Autodesk is replacing the original Pixlr Express.

Trying to Erase Me Will Not Work

I have learned not to responded to each and every dumb ass thing the ignorant belch. Not enough hours in a day.

Let's just say that I've been reading comic books, graphic novels and sequential art for a very long time. 

Longer than some of the craptacular haters have been alive.

I read when I wanted to. I read when it was not cool. I read when my soul told me I needed another infusion of a super hero because I didn't have any near by.

And yet we have grown men telling others that women don't read comic books and they never did. 

There was no such thing as a girl nerd. There was no such thing as a life long female fans of comic books.

Let this be my marker to the haters that want to pretend that they know the past, present and future.

You don't.
You can't even see past your own fears.

Excelsior!

It Become Real Only When You See It

I went to a convention. I had a little time so I walked around the neighborhood of the hotel. 

This is what I saw:

Old school newsstands were wooden and filled with magazines and newspapers. Maybe some chewing gum to help you break a dollar for the bus. 

If you wanted to know who got whacked or the story of the day you either went to a grocer, a box or a newstand. 

And this is what it is now, one or two copies of the Daily News and Inquirer.

I felt bad. 

Like a ghost passing through time.

But where do I get my news?

Where I live there are no newstands. Almost all of the news boxes are gone. There are some retail places that sell the Sunday papers. Places I rarely shop or visit.

I subscribe to one newspaper online but have to remember that I do have a subscription. It is my friends and relations that alert me to new stories that I check out.

Yet, something indeed has been lost. The solitude of reading at your own pace and reflecting on a story. 

She Was Tweaked But She Was Not There

I have often said that if you are a writer you need to ride public transit.  You will never lack for ideas.

Daisy got on the bus. She had no purse. She had no wallet and very few coins.

She was clean but kept holding on to herself and rubbing her skin as if ants were on it.

"I'm trying to get to downtown."

Metro buses pass through a number of cities with downtown areas.

"Where do you want to go?" the drive asked.

"The Valley."

The Valley is not downtown.
She fake fumbles for looking for change as she puts one or two coins in the box.

The driver, seeing this type of behavior before has to make some quick decisions.

He could throw her off the bus.
He could let her beg for a fare donation.
He could tell her to sit down.

He tells her to sit down.

Daisy goes to sit down but she doesn't stay down for long.

Three stops later, asked the driver how to get to 6th and Broadway.

The driver says he doesn't know.
Cuz, there are more than one.
It is that city thing.

Daisy gets upset with him.

"How do you not know? You are a bus driver. Why don't you know all of the routes of Metro?"

For those of you that drive, do you know each and every street in Los Angeles County?
What is on each street? How many Broadways there are in which city?

The driver asked again, "Where do you want to go?"

"6th and Broadway but I don't see why you don't know how to get there! That is ridiculous."

He opens the doors and she exits the bus to a city street that is not near 6th and Broadway or the Valley.

Still holding herself.
Still scratching.
Still lost.

Sometime Reaching Across Lines Is Filled with Peril

I was on the bus, minding my own business deep in my shallow thoughts. Woman interrupts me asking me do I know the woman hugging up on P45.

I'm civil but I respond, "No I don't."

I turn away from her.

She asked again about another photo.

I then recognize her being the aunt of ML King.

She then proceeds to show photos of members of the King family who are with P45 during an MLK celebration at the White House.

"They are are rich and prosperous."

I'm really trying to reconnect with the Plexiglas window.

Then she wants we to look at a blog with a famous African American historian who explains that MLK was and would have remained Republican.

Then she commented "This has nothing to do with slavery. Do know about slavery? "I just wanted to educate you and other people about how MLK was a Republican."

That about ripped my last nerve.

"That may or may not be the truth, there is a spectrum of political participation in the African American community; some liberal, some conservative and some centrist.

I will not take the word of some woman on a blog about it. I am not conservative and I am not interested."

She then got on the phone and told somebody to paint the washing machine and that a prospective tenant was angry because the two bedroom apartment wasn't.

I immediately went to the store and bought a box of Orange Creamsicles.
I didn't fall of the wagon. I ran into the store and bought them. I can't do this sober any more.

Trailer for Baa Baa Land

It has been awhile since I've posted anything. It is rough. Not the reality I want but it is the one that I have.

One thing about reading about history. Whole nother thing experiencing it as it happens.





Still working on the Anxiety Road Podcast. Not where I want it to be but slogging on, slogging on.
So if you are feeling tight and need some dull action, try the trailer for Baa Baa Land.

It can't hurt. Cuz it is just slow moving sheep.

All I Know for Sure Is In Real Life

There is a commercial for a drug that make it easier for cancer patients to endure chemotherapy.

It is a beautiful house. There is a loving husband. I think there is a loving dog too. And the woman is able to center herself and be. Just be.

And let me say that if there is a drug that make it easier for people to deal with chemo or radiation therapy I'm all for it. Probably couldn't afford it if I needed it but I begrudge no one that needs or has access to the medication.

Like I said, what little I know for sure is grounded in real life.

There is a woman. She has cancer (not me). She is going through chemo. She is also going to work.
There isn't a choice for her. There is no insurance. There is some support from the public health system but it is catch as catch can.

There is a husband. And a child.  And in the best of times she and the family are  scraping by day by day. There is a small chance she might beat it.

But I see her. Willing herself to work because she doesn't want to worry her husband.

Wants to take care of her child. I watch her going to work.

I say a prayer ever time I think of her.

I knew a man. He was a professor. Stone academic kinda fellow.
He got sick. Lost his home. Lost his job. Everything.

If you asked him he would go into detail about what is wrong with healthcare and this was back in the 80s. There was nothing academic about his feelings.

He lived it. Scraped by on Social Security.

There is another side. The people that yell that they do not want single payer. The ones that feel that each one take care of his own and responsibility stops at their front door and no further.

If you die too bad so sad, not their problem.

The ones that say it is a state's rights issue and then you go look at that states health system. There is bare bones emergency care if you can find it.

There are people called objectivists. The definition of objectivism is:

Objectivism is the philosophy of rational individualism founded by Ayn Rand (1905-1982). In novels such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , Rand dramatized her ideal man, the producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy.

And there are a whole bunch of them in Congress right now.

There is philosophy.

There is reality.

There reality is that real people are being injured for and unsustainable philosophic wet dream. But there are people jerking off in anticipation of making it a reality.

Some dreams should stay on the other side. The French Revolution happened for complicated reasons like taxation, lack of food, the powerful oppressing the weak,

Once the fuse it lit it is mighty hard to snuff out.

Be careful who and what you light up.

It might be a grown-up that remembers what his mom went through.