dedleg.com

Much like my city of residence, the Internet never sleeps. It just gets really, really boring sometimes. Unlike my city of residence, on the Internet, those times generally occur after the close of business on weekday evenings. When people aren’t at work they really don’t have much of a reason to procrastinate, which is the Internet’s primary reason for existence, and so, they probably aren’t on the computer and are off living their lives (unless they’re, like, a total nerd). I have no idea how people used to get through an eight-hour day at the desk before the dawn of the Internet… I mean, I guess they just did their jobs (???). Weird.

In any case, I care about the Internet, because without it, I have no idea how I’d get through an eight-hour day at the desk. And because I care about keeping the Internet as interesting as possible, I’m disregarding every blogging best practice I’ve ever learned and updating at one in the morning. Indeed, I will light up the night with sunset photography, because otherwise, the sun would never set on the Internet. I mean, aside from Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook and pretty much every other self-indulgent mode of expression encased within these three w’s that loves sunset photography, which, I guess, is practically the entire Internet anyway, come to think of it… but, uh, whatever. On with the flicks for fuck’s sake. If nothing else, they’ve got to be at least more interesting than a bunch of dumb words.

Quick tip: when posting routine, dime-a-dozen sunset photos, include periphery shots to provide context, keep things visually interesting, and add to the ambiance. When it comes to sunsets, ambiance is everything… actually, particulate matter in the atmosphere is everything, but that sounds less attractive. When scouting for periphery shots, ask yourself the following questions: How was the lighting in your one-bedroom apartment? How did the soft, golden glow emanating from your curtains fill the room? How high were you? Ultimately, it’s that last one that matters most, but they all play an important role.

Figured I should, like, update or something. Isn’t that what blogs do?

Well, the afternoon ended up being a wash thanks to Brooklyn’s current obsession with pouring rain every other day. First it was the fixed gear bikes, and now this! I guess that’s the way this whole “end times” thing is going to go… plenty of crap weather to go around. For example, here are a few photos of crap weather from a few days ago. Just imagine they were taken today, because it’s pretty much doing the same shit out there right now.

The years have taught me that strange rumblings from the sky bring many a photo op. Plus, it’s not like there’s much else to do during a thunderstorm than stare out the window anyway.

I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse, but every time a see a photo of lightning I get “Master of Puppets” stuck in my head. I’ll admit it, it’s weird. Sure, “Ride the Lightning” would make a lot more sense… Hell, “Master of Puppets” isn’t even on the album Ride the Lightning. It’s a completely senseless mental association. But I guess that’s heavy metal for you. Why make sense when you can rock?

Talk about your all-time happy accidents. I didn’t think I actually caught this lightning bolt when I took the shot, especially considering I was wielding my lowly point and shoot. Just proof of the old theory that if you take enough photos of the same thing, eventually you’ll get something worthwhile, I guess.

Sorry to all of you who can’t go skateboarding today, but hey, that’s why beer was invented!

Been doing my fair share of travel within the tristate area this summer, so here are a few from a recent trip up to Boston. To clarify, there aren’t any actual photos of Boston, just pictures of clouds I took out of the bus window, mostly. Come on, you should be used to this by now.

Hartford, Connecticut, I think. I was born there and I don’t even really know what it looks like. Says a lot about the place. Which is to say there’s not much to say about the place.

Chemtrails, or contrails? We may never know.

Needless to say, between the potential presence of chemtrails and the overwhelming presence of huge fucking power lines, the brain cancer alert system was all the way up to “oh most definitely.”

This one’s blurry, but fuck it, I took it out of a moving bus window — cut me some slack, jack.

Figured it was about time I put up some actual content, even just so you guys know the “Ded” part of “Dedleg” isn’t more than just a cute name. Fret not, my devoted dedlings, for I am very much alive. I just might not feel like it all that much these days, but that’s about to change quite quickly…

For now, however, here are a few photos from my recent sojourn up to Lake George, where I spent a much-needed few days being reminded that crazy people in the city don’t have shit on crazy people in the country, drinking lukewarm beer with Bigfoot in the great outdoors, and sunburning my back until its parched skin’s texture was not entirely unlike dried fruit. None of these photos will be quite as interesting as the events described above, but I guess that’s just more proof of why recording memories will never truly live up to actually living through them in the first place.

Another needless experiment in my ongoing “Taking pictures out of moving vehicles is hard” series.

We arrived under the cover of darkness, the blackest of shadows creeping behind us in our wake. Just how I like it. And let me tell you, “darkness” takes on new, darker meaning 200 miles from the city. It really helps you appreciate the familiar, artificial glow of neon signage like never before.

I’ve woken up to worse views…

Like I said, I’ve woken up to worse views. Take this one for example. Ah, nature. No one does creepy quite as beautifully as you.

I’ll have a few more assorted flicks from my trip later this week, I presume. And within the next couple of weeks, you should see Dedleg gradually returning to its regularly scheduled programming, which has been irregular as fuck for the better part of a year now. I recently resigned from my position as a productive member of society, so this is my last week of “normal” work. Now I can return to my life’s work, which is, obviously, my devoted study of how long a single human man can stay intoxicated by the effects of smoked marijuana. It’s exhaustive work, but I’m doing it for the good of science, and that helps me get through the days. Well, that, and Combos. Preferably pizza flavor, but the nacho variety aren’t too bad either.

‘Sup.

What’d you cats get into this weekend?

Personally, I’ve been spending too much of my summer from this side of the shades. Nonetheless, whoever invented good afternoon light was a very smart man / woman / divine progenitor (if you believe in fairytales, that is).

But you know what I believe in? The direct descendent of good afternoon light, sunsets like this one. They’re the only greater power I need. This one paired quite nicely with a crisp summer ale and a vaporizer loaded with fresh greens.

S’not much, just flexin’ my creativity nuts.

The view, Thursday, February 9^th, 1:08am.

Here are a few assorted shots from around the NYC to start off the week. Can it still be considered “starting off the week,” if it’s Monday evening at 9:00pm? Well, for most of the population, probably not, but when you wake up as late as I did today, I think you get a pass. Plus, when you wake up as late as I did today, it’s pretty clear that you don’t really care about… well… anything. So, like, who cares what time it is? Not me.

Morrissey was an emo, so it makes sense that for him, every day was like Sunday. Me, on the other hand? I’m an overgrown adolescent guy who smokes too much pot, so every day might as well be Saturday, as far as I’m concerned. On with the photos.

Any given urban sprawl’s got to start — and restart — somewhere. New York, and Manhattan in particular, is constantly being redeveloped until it finishes its transformation into the world’s largest luxury shopping mall. Seriously can’t wait… as long as they manage to squeeze an Orange Julius in somewhere.

Kind of a boring photo by conventional standards, but I’m a sucker for a good light show. The thing is, I was listening to Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon while I was staring at the reflection of this track lighting, and dude, that shit totally matched up.

Halt! Who goes there!

BBU — Somebody’s Watchin’ Me

The Empire State Building is getting psyched for Valentine’s Day, I guess. Maybe an intimate evening with the Freedom Tower is in the cards? If you ask me, a couple like that could really build something together

Oftentimes I find myself sitting by the window, staring into the Brooklyn night through a haze of marijuana smoke. Before long, I find myself entranced by the shimmering city lights, taking photos that, come morning, never look quite as cool as I remembered. The same magic is gone, perhaps hidden in the daylight, or, more likely, simply fading along with the mildly hallucinogenic effects of my favorite herb, only to return the next night like the mythical village of Brigadoon… or something.

The view out of my apartment last night was looking rather Close Encounters of The Third Kind, don’t you think? Anyway, I’ve got to get back to building my mud mountain in the living room, see ya.

I think we can all agree it’s in our best interest to put Halloweekend’s freak-ass nor’easter behind us. Granted, this may be a difficult task for some of my readers in New England who are buried under some 12 to 20 inches of snow and are still without power or cellphone service, but I must ask you to try. Not necessarily even for your sake, but for my own, so that I may justify putting up more photos from my week in Florida, which seems fairly utopian given the weather of late. Worse still, they’re sunset photos from my week in Florida, and this time of year, the only way you’re seeing a sunset is if you get out of work around 4pm. So let’s chalk this little trip down the Boulevard of Redundancy up to a little vicarious living — absorb as much heat as you can, friends, ‘cuz shit ain’t gonna last.

Pretty sure rear view mirrors were invented so you could check out a glorious sundown while you’re driving on the highway. And the best part is you never even have to take your eyes off the road! Hey, ain’t my fault they never specified which direction down the road they were talking about. And, uh, if they did… well… ain’t my fault I haven’t read the driver’s ed manual in a decade, neither.

There’s nothing particularly unique about those last two, especially when they’re sitting right on top of each other, but let’s be real. Given my predisposition — some “doctors” may have even called it an overwhelming compulsion — towards taking pictures of sunsets, a practice which has been quite well-documented on this blog, I think there is very little unique territory left to be covered when it comes to matters of the sun. So yeah, they are all the same… and yet they’re all different to me. It’s kind of like all those artsy photos of boobies and booties you normally find on “cool guy” blogs.

If every rose has its thorn, then does every sun have its moon? Hey, don’t look at me, I don’t know the answer either. Ask Bret Michaels, damn.

Here’s a very random assortment of photos I came upon while going through the archives last night. It seems sometime around February 15^th, I stopped working on my backlog of photos and jumped to more recent shots instead. So now, some months later, that backlog has developed into an even bigger backlog. And I figure I’d better start cleaning this shit out before 2011’s backlog runs into 2012’s. Say backlog one more time.

Sort of a scary image, considering it was 48 degrees this morning. Shit’s coming.

Psh. Anthrax is sooo 2001. Everybody who’s anybody knows that H1N1 is what’s all the rage in biological terrorism today! Get your genetically engineered horror diseases straight, damn.

And if this post was a ecological preserve, this would be the part where creepy windows suddenly become a very invasive species.

Told you.

Today, I woke up with a fairly grotesque white head emerging directly from the middle of my nose. Make no mistake, while hurricane Irene may have turned out to be the biggest disappointment since probably The Phantom Menace, nature is, decidedly, still a bitch.

Anyway, when it comes to natural disasters, “disappointing” is usually a good thing. Maybe that’s not how audiences leaving the theater on the opening day of Volcano felt, but there’s a big gap between fiction and reality, as, I think, the past 72 hours of local news coverage has illustrated quite extensively.

Of course, a responsible blogger would have photos to commemorate the nonevent… and I do. Trust me, it would have been perfectly snide. Unfortunately, my camera is currently existing within my girlfriend’s purse, a terrifying abyss I have learned well to never approach. So instead of a batch of photography that will only be relevant for, at best, the next 6 hours, I went with my remaining shots from Long Island’s wine country that I wrote about on Friday. At least it’s not completely irrelevant if you pay attention to the narrative I’m trying to string together here.

Oh, who am I kidding. Obviously, this is one of the biggest fumbles in blog history. I may never type again! So let’s stop trying to justify it and just accept the fact that Irene somehow still managed to become a veritable catastrophe.

That’s a whole lot of wine.

And that’s a whole lot of wine to be.

At any rate, you can look forward to our redundant, self-gratifying hurricane round-up tomorrow. And yes, I am aware that “look forward to” could also just as easily mean “plan to avoid.”