KnowRevolution

I’ve been aware for decades of a pattern that irritates me. I label it as bolt-on hell. Since a certain point in the industrialization of mass central concentrations of people, life seems to have gotten too easy for most people to make anything themselves. Thus, the bolt-on glory dogs barking about how cool they think they are when reality just shows them to be money rich but creatively poor.

Wannabe tough guys and useless women abound. Consumer glory dogs, buying their way into false significance. Women wear items and handbags, makeup and clothes to accentuate their features. But what are they, really, other than just another woman? Men have become the same in so many ways. Buying the next bumper system for their Jeep instead of fabricating it themselves. Most have a hard time doing basic repairs much less making anything. And this has become the norm. Just buy it instead, and go drink and be merry. No hill to climb, no earth to conquer, just an empty consumptive hole with a pulse. When you look at the shit you own, you know you didn’t make it. From a maker, I’m not impressed.

It bothers me because it narrows down my tribe. There are so many paths to walk, hills to climb, books to write, songs to sing, melodies to create and canvases to paint… where is the ‘you’ in all that stuff?

Probably why I like this site so much. I get to look around at other makers. But even in this community, have the women sold themselves out for an ideology along with the men? Bought into the mass uselessness of our fake society that pretends it has some kind of intrinsic value?

I’ve started messing around with the Helios M44-2 lens I got about 1/2 year ago. This is the second one I purchased- the first is set up for cinema use with my cinema rig, and has a different lens mount adapter. For photos, I still use the older A-mount systems, and this lens had to have the adapter for that. I really liked what this did on my cinema rig in the winter during a snowstorm. These lenses are famous for their dreamy balloonish swirly bokeh effects in the out of focus areas. This particluar pic reminds me of those old, horribly dated weird vase styles that seemed to be in every grandmothers home in the 70’s. Emerald green/teal pastels with odd golf-dimpled outer sides. Like strange snakeskin vessels lining the walls of an ancient steakhouse that smells equally of char and musty bedspreads. The old nicotine wall of air filling your eyes before your lungs get a chance to feel the black rain of families that don’t talk.

I have a ton of other lenses. I wanted this one. Wanted to see what the fuss was about. Now I know, and I fuss too. Recently I built a ladder bar suspension system for a drag race semi truck. Yesterday I laid new sod in my yard. This morning I was at my shop cleaning some things up as I get ready for some other changes, but also to tear down the studio setup I had for a customer’s ‘about us’ interview section of their website.

Consumer glory dogs are not multi-faceted. And at the end of the day, the primary intrinsic value they carry is their ability to purchase their way into significance.

This is why I know I enjoy standing on the other side of all of society. To be surrounded by a system where it is normal to be an acceptable human while simultaneously buying 100 percent of your shit…. not the society I would choose if there were other options.

Some guy who banged his young niece or some shit said be the change you want to see in the world. Some consistency first, there, tard nugget. Keep in mind, he didn’t get stoned for that. Hell, didn’t even get a stern talking to from his own peoples.

Same with the most famous walk of shame in history… Abraham was allowed to live and stay in the tribe after attempting to murder Isaac. Tell me you get the bigger picture. It wasn’t that faith had anything to do with shit. It was that child sacrifice was normal among those twats. If it were not, Abraham and Isaacs story would have concluded with uncle Joseph going all Revelations on Abraham, and putting an end to that old man’s insanity.

Consumer glory dogs are our modern wails and screechings of a cultural shitstorm. The other generations and cultures were fucked too. They did stupid shit and pretended it was normal because it was, even though each of them personally would have claimed it was uncomfortable if it were aimed at them.

I like color. I like the splashes of differentiation in this. When subjects become less about the noun in frame and more about the adjectives they express- there is a neat sweet spot at that crossroads.

Build, create, move, express, and follow the intuitive. The intuitive, the creative is the wholly unique things that we have as humans. Glory dogs of bolt on stupidity run the show, but that is why the show is so boring. No life left in it.