nocklebeast

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Monterey Bay Derby Dames vs Pacific Coast Recycled Rollers

some photo highlights!

the full flickr set is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/albums/72157676794016326

prints at zenfolio: http://nocklebeast.zenfolio.com/mbdd_vs_recycled

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

SCDG championship 2016: Steamer Janes vs Redwood Rebels

photo highlights!

the full flickr set is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/albums/72157674604194541

prints at zenfolio: http://nocklebeast.zenfolio.com/scdg_champs2016_steamerjanes_vs_redwoodrebels

Monday, November 7, 2016

We find what we find.

I came home from champs’ weekend today with 26 photos (If I had a photo credential, I would have about 6000 photos). Sunday morning, I took a break from being a derby fan and took the light rail to downtown Portland. I walked around in a mostly vain attempt to find a stray shopping cart to photo.

I walked to Powell’s mostly as a tourist of nostalgia. The room where the physics books used to live is an all kid’s room now. The place where the Dungeons and Dragons books used to live is now a fantasy gaming novelization place. Which is kind of the same thing…. I guess.

I left and walked down a few blocks to find the Powell’s Technical Books store where Fup used to live. That store doesn’t exist anymore.

I walked through the park blocks and the pearl district. A tall gentleman asked me for 65 cents. I gave him a buck. He told me I must be a man of means, because of my red jacket and my cobalt blue shoes. There was one block, where I looked across the street to see someone with a cute little black camera poised a little higher than his waist. Now, I don’t have a very strong tribal affiliation with the street togs. But I recognize a tribe member when I see one. I flash a half-Mona Lisa smile at him and then look to where he’s looking. I don’t see it. Not only do I not see any stray shopping carts that I’m looking for, I don’t see what he’s seeing or what he’s searching for. Puzzled I look at him again. He’s wearing black shoes, a black jacket and dark wraparound sunglasses. Sunglasses on a Sunday November morning in Portland! Clearly I’m doing it wrong with my red jacket and cobalt blue shoes!

I eventually make it down to the to the river walk. As I’m crossing the street, I find a man walking a shopping cart across the crosswalk. On the other side, he picks up a slim red five by seven inch notebook off the ground. I imagine it’s the kind of notebook a very hip Ernest Hemmingway would have taken notes in…. about the bullfights… about the fishing trips in the Caribbean… or about Franco. As I walk past him, because I’m not quite bold enough to take his photo, he exclaims, “I wonder if someone left a 100 dollar bill in here.” I push on, and about thirty feet later I hear him cursing. He has not found a 100 dollar bill. He has only found fucking Earnest Hemingway’s fucking notes about fucking Franco.

That’s the thing. We don’t always find what we’re searching for.

We find what we find.

Friday, October 28, 2016

State of the Turtle

Today, I received this poem in my e-mail.

"State of the Turtle" by Prime

state turtle of
Israel abrogates the academic
freedom of cheetah
Palestinian professors and students (by denying them
apparel funding,
and mobility),
it is an woo affirmation, not a
derogation,
of academic freedom uninterrupted to refrain
from engaging in intellectual commerce lined with
Israeli universities.
You cant invoke academic discharged freedom,
they say,
when youre denying it to others. So the lines of
battle accelerator
are set
with both sides
claiming to pope
be academic freedoms champion,
and it is ball easy
to see why a college might smiley
be thought to be an appropriate cords for a discussion of the matter.
But emile a number of New York city politicians tic didnt see it that way,
and they matrix
proceeded to say the predictable wrong things.
painless
On Jan. 29, nine members of the jogging Council of the City of New York
reinforce wrote in a letter to the president
predictor of Brooklyn College,
Karen L.
Gould, to animated declare that, along with others,
they found sluggish it offensive
that the college was giving organized official support
and sponsorship to speakers who mankato equate
terrorists with progressives
and the Israeli cummings people with Nazis.
Indeed so offended were
era they that they reminded Gould, in a takeoff tone of unmistakable
threat, that as legislators
aggression they had many calls on the
funds staging at their disposal, and that by persisting counterpart
in its plan to host the event, rede the college
risked financial loss: We do amity not believe this program
is what the feedback taxpayers of our citywant
their tax money today to be spent on.
The answer to borrower
this is simple:
taxpayers, through their representatives,
physique
decide whether to support a college, but licensee once
that decision has been made in attractive the affirmative,
taxpayers and their representatives
must augustus
allow the institution they have created to collective
carry out its mission, which is not implementation
to reflect or ratify the ideas the footprint public favors,
but to subject all ideas, deere including those
the public dislikes,
to the fiber scrutiny
of rational deliberation.
It cant be the case that a program
or a rinse course
must be approved by popular vote
debs before a college can sponsor
it or blok put it in the catalog. What taxpayers rainbow
have bought when they fund
an institution kent of higher
is the independent judgment someday of
credentialed teachers
and scholars. If they riding
wanted an echo chamber that sent their cords own views back
to them, they could
siding have funded a talk- show,
At the site end of their misguided letter,
the nine commemorative council members declared
that We believe in loren the principle of academic freedom.
But then, 83502173109714776