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Ah, Summer, by far the fairest of the seasons. Well… not really. That description fits Spring better, if you want to get into technicalities… but you know what — fuck those. Technicalities aside, what I should have said anyway is that Summer is by far the best season. And if you disagree, you can go eat a sandwich. MADE OUT OF KNUCKLES

And wouldn’t you rather be eating a mutagen bar, anyway?

There are people out there in this wild world who actually say crazy things like, “I enjoy the change of seasons.” And they’re not saying it purely from a sense of premature nostalgia for a future climate ravaged by greenhouse gasses, dying oceans, deforestation, solar flares, nuclear war, run-on sentences, whatever. This is surprising to me, because the other three seasons only serve as a reminder of why Summer is so goddamned good. I have a good memory. If you don’t, try taking some Ginkgo biloba¹.

And then there are people who don’t like Summer at all. I don’t trust these people. Frankly, they’re mildly worrisome. If you don’t find some sense of magic, as horrifically sappy as that sounds, in the sun and sweat of a real Summer, I have another suggestion for you. Put a magnet to the base of your neck, it will fix your problems. And mine — one less robot in the world.

¹Dedleg LLC is not a certified medical doctor, nor does he own one of those awful “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” t-shirts. He is also not a limited liability company. But he is pretty good at Mario Kart when he’s drunk.

So, it’s Memorial Day. Which means you’re probably outside, enjoying the weather on your day off and not wasting your time reading blogs. After all, it’s Un-American to not spend Memorial Day drinking all day, getting heat exhaustion, and passing out around 8 at night. And it’s also Un-American to waste time on the Internet when you’re not getting paid to do so by your meaningless corporate job.

But, if you don’t live in America, feel free to spend the day indoors, being lazy and disgusting… you know, like typical Americans.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a beach and a future with skin cancer calling my name. Dedleg will return tomorrow, a redder, hungoverer man.

The blog’s been pretty street-photo heavy these days, and by street I mean hard, real hard. So I thought it might be a good idea to soften things up, take my sassy new camera to the beach, and try to find some corners I hadn’t peered into yet. And what do you know, I did!

That’s all for now, folks. It’s 1:51 am, and Papa Bear needs his beauty sleep.

Looks like my friend Foster Beach is finally beginning to thaw.

Those may appear to be normal waves, but it’s actually all an incredibly thin layer of ice floating on top of the water — melting remnants of a time many hours prior, when it was still cold enough to freeze the rippling waves on their way to the shore.

The ice was barely perceptible at first — I didn’t even realize until I got much closer to the water. But the seagulls delicately perched on it should have been a give away. Seems like as good a place to eat a diet subsisting mainly of McDonald’s fries as any.

One of my favorite parts of photography is its ability to capture a moment forever (or at least until you accidentally spill beer on the memory card anyway) — so I ended up with something of a fetish for shooting pictures of the beach this winter. Taking pictures of the icy lake, desolate and motionless, is the closest I’ll ever come to traveling through time… unless that fucker on eBay ever gets back to me… Regardless, the beach was frozen, trapped in the past, and then my photos froze the beach, frozen in time, in time. It’s metaphysical as hell, and if that doesn’t get you giddy and excited, well… I guess… you’re less of a nerd than I am. Congratulations, jock.

Welcome to the end of the world.

Just kidding, it’s only my old friend Foster Beach again.

I once read a quote about photography to the effect of “if you look into the viewfinder and see something you’ve seen before, then don’t click the shutter.” I’m paraphrasing, and I don’t remember who it was that originally coined that bit of wisdom, but I found it pretty impacting (although I guess not quite enough to actually remember anything specific about it).

Whether or not I always follow that advice is a separate issue altogether, but I try to keep it in mind since, shit, it can’t hurt. And on this particular day, I think I almost hit it. Although I’ve been to this spot so many times before, this time it looked otherworldly. And I hope the photos capture that… it’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

I was anxiously waiting for winter’s icy hammer to fall for a while before the blizzard we had last week. After an altogether disappointing summer, I’d been expecting the worst for months, but instead, we had a long, drawn-out fall. In the midwest, that’s about the best you can hope for. Nonetheless, earlier this month I knew our days were numbered, so I headed over to the beach before it turned into a skating rink.

There’s a fence around the entire thing now, which I think is less of an attempt to keep people out so much as a warning that you really don’t want to go in that water. Sometimes you’ve got to protect people from themselves, nah’mean?

And yeah, I guess you’d have to be a pretty big goon if you went diving there at any time of the year. Swimming rocks!

Back when I was young and my parents hadn’t yet accepted that there was hardly a drop of athletic ability amidst all the blood in my veins, I spent some time touring the various frustrating, extracurricular sports teams. Soccer, basketball and flag football all saw my rein of incompetence, and I quickly learned that the bench was a great place to relax if you wanted to sit a few plays out. And thanks to what surely looked like a mild case of mental retardation whenever I was on the field, the coaches usually wanted me to sit a few out as well.

Years have passed and team sports have largely become something for people who are paid millions of dollars to catch a ball and like to kill strippers, but benches are still a good place to sit a few plays out (metaphoricwise) when you’ve been taking a beating in that game called life.

So I was thinking to myself, how about instead of going out with a tripod and taking photos the right way, what if I just shot it all hand held with a stupidly high ISO and have all my shots turn out like crap instead?

Obviously you can see the results of that little experiment.

Not a night goes by without me tossing and turning, tortured by regret weighing on my shoulders. The mood and surrealism in these shots is golden… I was filled with giddy excitement as I was taking them, thinking I had hit the proverbial photography lottery. Instead, I got a bunch of photos with potential… potential buried under hideous scars — it’s almost as if you were looking at them while in the midst of a staggering head rush. So I guess… just pretend that’s what I was going for and let’s never speak of this again.

The beach is changing into its winter clothes. In the winter, a glacier forms here along the shoreline. It’s pretty scary because it’s wet, huge waves are constantly being hurled against it, and most of all, that water is death itself, but the glacier is still awesome anyway.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I had somehow never noticed this sign until about a minute before I took this picture.

Darkness falls! (With a touch of the surreal)

If I had a metal band… that would totally be one of our songs.

I really shouldn’t edit photos when I’m stoned, all that ever happens is I come up with horrible posts like this one and eat too many Animal Crackers.