dedleg.com

Wassup, playas? Same ol’ story over here, I’m afraid. Been busy working… and not working… and not blogging very much either, apparently. If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve recently increased my relevancy by another 15% by joining the hordes of others already addicted to making commonplace photos of food look vintage on Instagram. I’m still not entirely sure where to draw the line when it comes to what I should shoot with Instagram, and what I should shoot with my real camera (yes, those still do exist). So I guess for now I’m operating under the loose guidelines that if I have my camera on me, I’ll use that, and if I only have my phone on me, I’ll use that. It’s stressful being this white and privileged, I gotta tell you.

Anyway, you can catch my grainier-than-normal photography on Instagram by following @dedleg, but you probably already figured that much out.

As for my aforementioned “normal” photography… well, you can catch that right here. Or from one night of unprotected sex, 3 (debatably intoxicated) out of 48 doctors agree. Remember, one small choice can change your life for the itchier.

Looks like we’re finally coming to the end of the trail here, as far as these camping photos from last month are concerned. What timing, too, as my intestinal tract seems to have only just recovered from the days on end of eating nothing but encased meat and baked beans, washing it down with nothing but beer and black coffee, and avoiding the rudimentary toilet (read: hole in the middle of the woods filled with festering human waste) at all costs, even if it meant inviting colon cancer in through the back door, as it were.

Why was shitting in the woods a nonoption, you may ask? Well, feast your eyes on the creature below. A couple of these bad boys were hanging out by the river the same weekend we were there — only they had set up camp under the toilet seat. Figured I’d let them use the facilities in peace. Seemed only polite.

An experienced camper will tell you: you never know what kind of creepy crawlies you might find in your shoes after a night in the woods. They’ll also tell you that if you’ve been bitten, it’s probably already too late to save you. Fortunately for me, this guy had already hopped over to the great cobweb in the sky. Any more alive-looking and this not-so-little fucker would be, well, alive!

All quiet on the St. Croix River. Well, except for the faint buzzing of a swarm of gnats fucking overhead… fortunately the camera doesn’t do the elegant mating dance of the common flying insect justice.

A closer look at the encased meats I was talking about earlier. Looking at these stuffed tubes of animal byproducts and miscellaneous carcinogens now, I’m beginning to understand why we usually waited until nightfall to cook dinner…

And like the campers before us, we were sure to leave nothing but smoldering ruins in the fire pit for the next pack of explorers to investigate. Now what are you waiting for? Go make some absurd stories of your own, while it’s still warm enough for them not to inevitably end with an epilogue detailing your urine-soaked long johns and frostbitten fingertips.

Spent an hour this morning sorting through my backlog of b-sides. This is to be distinguished from my backlog of photography in general, which is slowly creeping towards the borders of infinity. The Island of The Misfit Photos seemed more approachable, seeing as I’ve always related to the outcasts of our society. I mean, except for lepers, because that shit’s just nasty.

NYC’s been experiencing some notably low cloud cover these days. Might have something to do with this humid subtropical climate Manhattan apparently has, a fact I suppose I was unaware of until I just read it on Wikipedia moments ago. And yet… I feel like I always suspected as much… or, at least the hot sweat running tortuously down my back did.

Every once and a while a breeze will blow through my window, wafting in the summer scents from the garden outside. I breathe it in. The warm air is refreshing, even sweetly nostalgic, when suddenly… my lip curls, nostrils flaring just slightly, and I think to myself, “Smells like a dead raccoon is out there.” And then I’m like, “Oh yeah.”

Somehow this post is turning into a wildlife seminar. I’m babysitting my friend’s mutant goldfish for the summer and I don’t think the little fucker is all that appreciative of the hospitality. Along with his patsy, a catfish sidekick, he spends his days staring at me. Sometimes he does this while sharpening a knife he acquired from one of those metal diver statuettes on a rock. It’s unsettling, but I keep feeding him anyway, because at least if he’s full he’s less likely to attempt to eat my finger.

It had been a while since I encountered one of my old arachnid pals — you know, my uninvited roommates back in Chicago. I figured moving across the country would pretty much be the final nail in our friendship. All those times I accidentally ate them while I was sleeping was bad enough. When I first saw this guy in my bathroom a couple weeks ago, I foolishly thought that perhaps they had secretly traveled to New York in my belongings, only to lay dormant through the winter. And with the arrival of warmer weather, they started venturing out into their new territory. Alas, thanks to Wikipedia’s notorious party-pooping, it seems as if I was foolishly naive to assume so, given that “Zebra spiders are widespread across Britain, Europe, and North America, and are found throughout the Holarctic. They often live close to or in human settlements.”

Nothing is special anymore.

Being that we’re mere hours away from the Summer Solstice, let’s hear it for full spectrum light. And here’s a full spectrum of colorful photos to mark the occasion, because nice weather means I have one less thing to complain about, and I think everybody can agree that’s a very welcome thing.

Warmer weather also means increased levels of skateboarding-related activity in my day-to-day life, and that means increased opportunities to incur minor injuries that make my blood look like strawberry jam.

Speaking of blood… check out this bandage from a recent tattoo touch-up I had. It’s like the Shroud of Turin, only cooler because skulls trump Jesus.

It’s Monday — wake up and smell the man-eating alien flowers from beyond the moon.

CGI animation has come a long ways since Toy Story. It seems like just about anybody these days, given the necessary training and a complete lack of a social life, is capable of producing gorgeous CGI-animated shorts without whatever unfathomable technological steroids Disney can afford to inject into Pixar’s muscly ass. Indeed, this is not your typical Pixar movie — no, this is nature, and nature is a mean motherfucker.

For real though, this is mind-melting it’s so good.

And have a taste of some of these stills… holy fuck. They’ve got my fangs watering… venoming? Weird.

Loom was created by Polynoid, a design and animation collective based in Germany. They don’t get outside much, I’d wager. But I guess, who the fuck needs to when you can make a realistic outside on your computer? And if there’s anything pop culture has taught us through the seminal Twilight films, it’s that sunlight is for mortals, ew.

It’s been a skull-heavy week around here. What can I say? I mean besides “get used to it.”

So, in anticipation of this weekend’s self-destructive festivities, here’s a photo of a glittery skull being force-fed alcohol amongst some other miscellany.

However, I must be off, as all play and no work make Dedleg a poor boy — and I’m not talking about an intimidatingly large regional sandwich stuffed with creepy crawlies found at the bottom of the sea. That would be scary. Fortunately we’re just dealing with financial destitution here, which is a considerably more manageable horror. And speaking of, why don’t you do your part to help out and buy some Dedleg buttons, the perfect compliment to any wardrobe. This is kind of like when somebody asks you if you want a piece of gum, and they’re actually just trying to nicely tell you that your breath is fucking rank. You should buy some Dedleg buttons, because, frankly, right now you look kind of like a loser.

In a sort of continuation of Monday’s photos, here’s some more grit and grime from around my neighborhood. It’ll take me a little while to work through my backlog of Chi-Town photography, even though I’ll be bidding the Windy City adieu at the end of the week. Despite how much I’ve wrestled with living here, particularly during the harsh winters, there is a lot I find myself feeling nostalgic about already. And you won’t find any of it in a tourism pamphlet.

Looks like a kickin’ party venue. So exclusive, there isn’t even a way in.

Anybody else feel like planes flying around with a banner behind them are the absolute worst form of advertising ever? By “worst”, I mean most ineffective. Trying to read them usually involves blinding yourself to some degree, and that’s only if you happen to notice something’s flying around aimlessly up there. And no, I’m not just bitter after blowing two months’ pay on that Dedleg skywriting experiment.

In a couple of these shots, you can start to get a sense of the complete arachnid takeover that occurred here this summer. Spiders were everywhere — that is not hyperbole. Literally, entering the outside world meant coming into contact with spiderwebs on a constant basis. Mosquitoes on the other hand? Not a problem.

Ah, Labor Day, summer’s last gasp. Does anybody even read blogs on Labor Day, or is everyone still asleep or nursing their well-deserved, long-weekend hangovers? Seems like this was the fastest summer ever — but maybe that’s just because some cold air has moved into Chicago for the past few days, as it has a tendency to do for, like, 85% of the year.

In subjective terms, summers really do get shorter with every passing year. The longer you’ve been alive, the shorter every summer is in a relative sense. Those precious three months will continue to make up a smaller and smaller percentage of your total lifetime as you get older. Those summers from your youth, those endless, idyllic vacations from school, now bathed in the warm light of nostalgia, really did feel longer than they do now, considering the sum total of our life experience at the time. Just sit on that one for a while. And people wonder why I get depressed, shit.

Unfortunately, summer’s death does not come without collateral damage. Appreciating greenery just isn’t the same in the colder months, and I’m actually not even talking about weed for once. Cacti and succulents have a hard time living through a Chicago winter, which I can absolutely relate to. But it’s alright, since I have this cool hobby — it’s called buying plants and then watching them slowly die. It’s totally fulfilling and I really think it’s going to be the next big thing.

It wouldn’t be a Dedleg photography post without one of these making an appearance. Whatever, if I call sunsets a “theme” in my work, it’ll sound like a respectable pursuit, and not like I’m not just a shut-in who takes too many pictures out his window.

Upon further reflection though, I suppose maybe there is something to be said for my obsession with taking photos of sunsets, particularly in light (heh) of my discussion about summer’s passing. Perhaps I have some kind of morbid fixation, a fascination, with the moment just before the end. Or maybe I’m just not much for goodbyes.

In light of yet another summer weekend flushed down the toilet, I thought some photos as dark as Friday and Saturday’s black out attempts would fit the bill.

Thought this little piece of wall art might help increase our apartment’s resale value.

In other news, the arachnid invasion of Chicago has really gained momentum in the past month. At first I kind of liked having the little guys around, but the thing is… now they’re not so little anymore…

Maturity flows like beer at most bars. Bodily fluids do too, apparently.

Speaking of “oh shit!” moments… act cool — it’s the fuzz.

Here are some selected visions from my recent travels.

This week is the first real break from the oppressive, ant-under-a-magnifying-glass type heat we’ve been enduring for the past month or so. But a couple weeks ago, when it was consistently above 90 degrees every day, in addition to wondering if that liquid that just dripped on you was condensation from a window air conditioner or spit lobbed by a bored, zit-faced high schooler, Chicago’s sweltering citizens also had to watch out for melting tar, dripping from elevated train track overpasses like asphalt stalactites.

Anyway, that was a long and confusing sentence, when really all I had to say is, “Doesn’t this drippy shit remind you of Robert Patrick’s character in Terminator 2?”

Clearly, we don’t have much time.

Speaking of creepy villains, aren’t these some fucking sinister-looking eyes? This shit is straight up scary, and not only because it’s horribly designed. Shouldn’t this make Chicago’s commuters feel safer, not like they’re being spied on by a shadowy mastermind? Maybe that just depends on how you use the train system. Personally, I’m going to have to find somewhere else to buy drugs.

Then, I discovered Nirvana in a 7-11. Not sure how this little bird feels about Combos, but I can tell you he likes Chipotle almost as much as white people from the suburbs!

Getting a decent shot of this badass motherfucker weaving his web was an exercise in patience. Fortunately, I was able to snag one right before my train pulled in. I had to get uncomfortably close (both in terms of neck strain and proximity to huge, horrifying spiders) to get the picture, and I wasn’t about to stick around to see if he liked white people from the suburbs as much as white people from the suburbs like Chipotle.

These photos were supposed to go up back in May, and I was going to be all cute like “April showers bring May flowers,” but then I forgot about them and here we are, two months later… lost without a corny joke to make.

Isn’t it bizarre that butterflies survive by licking flowers? That’s really what it comes down to. Except when Wikipedia tries to sneak by incendiary information like this when nobody’s looking:

Butterflies feed primarily on nectar from flowers. Some also derive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, dung, decaying flesh, and dissolved minerals in wet sand or dirt.

I’m sorry, but did you say decaying flesh? Oh, ok, you did. Just wanted to make sure of that before I added butterflies to my ever-growing list of mundane horrors.

Yeah, so… there are close shots, and then there’s this close shot. Obviously, it would have been better if in the adjacent shot that ambulance had been the Ecto-1. Not that the Ecto-1 has anything at all to do with orchids, I just really like Ghost Busters.

In other news, the arachnid invasion in my apartment is unrelenting. It’s not obvious what they want, aside from lots of bugs, and I don’t really mind the company, but the statistical likelihood of me inhaling at least a few of these little fuckers in my sleep has got to be skyrocketing by the day. And the thought of that just makes my insides, um, crawl

So yeah, if you never hear from me again, you know what happened.

The critics could never appreciate the greatness of Eight Legged Freaks, but that’s fine. They’ll be the first to die in the Arac Attack.

I’m calling from Prosperity, Arizona. My name is Chris McCormick. I know how this is gonna sound, but you have to believe me, I swear it’s the truth! Our town is being attacked by giant spiders.

Monstrous spiders and dirt bikes? Totally rad!!! Immediately before this scene, Brad (the blond x-treme dude with the weird mannequin mouth) tried to steal a young Scarlett Johansson’s virginity and in doing so, earned himself a tasing in the crotch, which caused him to fall out of his truck, piss himself and then get chased by mutated jumping spiders. I mean, seriously, this movie never lets up.

And speaking of jumping spiders, look who I found sneaking around…

Hey, I’ll take these creepy little fuckers over roaches any day.