So I'm sitting here watching "The Golden Compass" and a thought I've had before recurs: Why do cities in fantasy films look so wonderful when cities in real life (especially in the U.S.) look so pathetically dull?

I mean it's pretty obvious that we love the concept of these fantastic cities. Every time we create a city that doesn't have to be historically accurate there are spires, domes, minarets, arches, details cornices, even fantastic parks and statues. Half the fun of a fantasy film is seeing the wonder and beauty of the human imagination. My question is: why do we insist on being so incredibly dull in the real world?

We more or less have the ability to build most of the wonders envisioned, or at least a good number of them. In fact up until the death of the Art Deco movement we were pretty much moving in that direction. For much of history architects did try to create beauty and wonder. A building might be considered noteworthy in many ways: it might be the biggest of it's kind, the most beautiful, the most revolutionary, even the most unusual. Sadly it seems that some time around WWII we started playing it safe. Real estate was too expensive to take risks. We might still strive to be the biggest, maybe once in a while even revolutionary, but even the revolutionary rarely looked it.

DA is filled with photographers, painters, poets, digital visionaries, models, sculptors, and every other kind of artist there is. Imagine if cities had the same desire to seek beauty as the foks here. If cities were wonderous places where even the post office was a place of amazement, folks would be racing into them rather than fleeing them.

I want to live in Minas Tirith. How 'bout you?

So, I've just finished updating my gallery. Some stuff was re-edited, some stuff came down, some stuff went up. Let me know what you think.

I actually have nothing to say. I'm just tired of looking at that last entry. LOL!

Okay, so I'm sitting here today in my little apartment, just kind of flowing with the world, ya' know? So while I'm sitting here I have this really odd awareness pop into my head...

I'm okay.

Now here what makes that so weird. I'm not seeing anybody, I'm not about to start seeing anybody, and due to my current lifestyle it's unlikely I'll be meeting anyone I may start seeing in the near future. For me to feel good about myself in that situation is somewhat akin to an anorexic asking for seconds. I've always had one glaring character flaw (big enough to stand out amogst the dozens of others that come and go throughout my life anyway): I simply cannot be confident about who I am unless I have a girlfriend. I have no idea why I'm that way, although I do have some theories, but here I am at the ripe old age of 43 and for the first time since puberty I'm alone and it's okay!

I will admit that part of it is that there are women in my life, just none of them are romantically connected to me. I have two young ladies locally in their 20's that I've sort of adopted, a friend from the past that I recently rediscovered who's now living in New Zealand with her husband and children, an incredible woman here on DA who I just really enjoy her work, and a woman I work with who is off limits but with whom I'm becoming good friends with (she works for me so that would be a no-no).

Normally I'd be miserable in such a situation. Too young, too far away, too close, all unavailable, I'd be in an ongoing drunken funk. Yet instead I find myself looking forward to hanging with my "kids" and hearing what they're up to, planning a trip to New Zealand in '09 to meet a friend's family and do some photography, reading the poetry and seeing the images of a really wonderful person here, being genuinely glad that I have a new friend at work.

Good gods, you don't think I could finally be getting over my high-school obsession with sex, do you?

Damn, I gotta go play a video game or something...

I just posted some shots. Two of them; "Lazy Winter Afternoon II" and "Bookworm redux II" were taken from the Artistic Nude category and placed in scraps by the gods. I have no friggin' clue why this occrred as they're artistic nudes to me, so I have no idea why they were removed and where they should be. I'm doubly confused as "Bookworm redux and "Lazy Winter Day" were posted at the same time and in the same style but WEREN'T moved?!?! Therefore I'd like to ask for your feedback dear reader:

1- Please take a look at these two images and let me know why (in your opinion) they're not nudes, and where you would put them.

2- Do I need to start asking my models to throw their ankles behind their ears before something is nude enough"???

Why do I seem to have this ongoing headache with this damned site?