i could OF maybe writed a novel but i getted too scred of writing. my sunday headache is back i went for aLMOST a year of not drinking alcohol and i felt leaner and stronger and got complicated. i could have written a novl but i didn't really have that much to say in words i went for a year almost without drinking alcohol except one beer at christmas with scott and mike, and a couple drinks with anne, the woman i am still in love with, at october or whenever it was that she cam down here and i was afraid to make love with her because i felt too fat and scared and old and soft and white and disappointing hey but haven't i always basically felt like that? it's just then i was younger and tanner and harder and less scared, so it was easier to overcome the feeling. i could have written a novel but here it is another morning and i'm doing this instead. i wonder how many hours of my life have been spent thinking about whether or not i should SET MY camera to shoot RAW or JPG or RAW+JPG. I wonder how many hours of my life have been spent thinking about how I would type the previous sentence,how or whether I should explain what a RAW or a JPG is. i mean most people know what a JPG is, but then again maybe they don't or maybe they won't by the time they're reading this after I'm dead. See the problem? I could have written a novel but I'm too worried about what people will think after I'm dead and they read this instead of the novel i didn't ever get around to writing because I was too worried about shooting RAW and finding the best RAW decoder. THe best RAW decoder is the one that came with my camera, which is weird when you think about it. ANd here I am thinking about that again. Want to know why I want to shoot RAW? I'll tell you: It's not because I want to be able to recapture blown highlights and pull up the shadows and "be able to do so much more with your pictures in post." It's because I want people to know I'm powerful and smart and artistic and skilled and worldly enough to BE ABLE to recover blown highlights and etc. I want people to think of me as this amazing magician. I can't just be a guy taking snapshots. I can't just be a guy taking amazing snapshots of my daughter's spun gold hair dancing with spectral highlights as she looks over her shoulder, thinking about something eternal. She's looking at an origami piano she made me, because she wanted to take it apart and look at the folds and relearn how she did it, but you wouldn't know that from the picture. Just like Mona Lisa was looking at a pig trying to get the cookies, but you don't have to know that. All you have to know is that I have this virus that keeps me spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and the problem is the problem. IT's 100% exactly like that guy in the mental hospital that Delany said was always obsessing over which necktie to wear, and it was like a life or death situation, and he couldn't decide, and they were like dude, THE PROBLEM *IS* THE PROBLEM. So instead of writing a novel, I'm sitting here trying to work around the mind virus that has me circling back between do i want to shoot raw+jpg because I might get a better portrait or do I want to do it to look smart and capable, and do I want to shoot raw or just jpg or raw + jpg just in case, but the only reason i don't want to do that is because it seems messy and less definitive. I have like a definitivity fetish or something man. DId I mention I'm still in love? I'm not "gay" so to speak, I don't fill that role in society. But I'm not "Straight" either so help me god. I could have written a novel except here it is almost 47 o'clock and I'm still typing word after word about whether I'm gay or straight or raw or jpg. It'd be funny if I had the skills to make it funny. So I'm a little crooked, not too straight, don't like football but do love women. DGMW, I love men too, some of them, like Michael. I'm just kind of a sponge. Bisexual is a word that exists, but it just seems so messy and not definitive. Did I mention that I got a thing about either-or binary definitions? Probably because I grew up as a computer. TYpe type type into the night and it all burns out like stars in slow motion. Meanwhile, nothing happens. At least my headache is starting to go away. Lay off drinking for a while again, and find a way to go to Hawaii with Anne in October. Love her, love the men you'll undoubtedly get a chance to ogle with her, love the younger man she's going to find to flirt with and maybe if you're lucky fuck, swim in the ocean, kiss the salt off her lips, you know you want to, and hey. While you're at it, love yourself a little bit before this is all over. Those are my directions. I don't fucking care what kind of camera you take, just, whatever. Ready? OK, go.