World’s Ending? You Want Fries with That?

Postaday for June 6th: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry… …for tomorrow we die. The world is ending tomorrow! Tell us about your last dinner — the food, your dining companions, the setting, the conversation.

The world is ending and all I had was some left over pork roast and quinoa with mushrooms? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Life as we know it puffed out without so much as a whimper, and my last meal was leftovers night, an Adele’s sausage on a potato bun with mustard ketchup relish? If I had know the earth was doomed to explode in a fiery ball at the hands of an evil alien race bent on dominating the galaxy, I would have washed it down with something better than a glass of filtered water followed by a Tollhouse pan cookie.

Although, if I’m being honest here, that cookie was pretty good.

Listen to me very carefully. If you get wind of a secret government project to create a mag-lev driven blackhole reverse polarity inducer, a fool-hardy attempt to leash the power of unlimited energy, please tell me ASAP. I am serious. We all know that the Fenning equation for mag-lev is seriously flawed, and the resulting transductive breakdown will set off a chain reaction, flipping the quark state of every atom within three hundred nanometers and annihilating covalent bonds. I need to know so I can have as many last meals as possible. Last night was leftovers. The night before? Three Jamison and gingers and a slice of pizza and a pulled pork sandwich. I was at a party.

You know as well as I do that there’s a statistical probability that Snorg the Uberdragon awakens on planet Maxifraxx, and when he does, he will fly with space wings of gossamer blacklight straight towards planet Earth, the home of his metafather Tris. They will fight, for there can be only one Uberdragon lest the worshipers of Grennel throw off their yokes and revolt. The red-hot lava breath that Snorg and Tris spit at one another as they beat their thousand-mile long wings will rip our planet to shreds. So if you see Snorg in your backyard telescope, tell me. I don’t want my last meal to have been what I had three nights ago, a cranberry and walnut salad with a vinaigrette dressing that was, in my opinion, a bit heavy on the balsamic.

Four nights ago I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and baked beans. That’s not a bad last meal. If you happen to know that plate tectonics under the Pacific ocean are grinding together and resonating a feedback surge that just happens by sheer coincidence to be at the same time as an upswell over the Mariana trench thanks to a phase-state-change from the heat of decayed phytoplankton, and an atmosphere-sucking tsunami is on its way to wipe out the entire Western United States seaboard, plugging up the release tubes in five major volcanic systems, causing Rainier to explode and spew a trillion metric tons of ash into the atmosphere, blotting out the sun for a thousand years, then, sure, fried chicken with all the fixings would make a fine last meal.

Just in case, though, right now, I’m heading over to a local Mexican chained called Azteca. If the Old Gods are coming back to devour the earth and we’re to burn in the hellish pit of their stomachs for a millenia, I’m going out with a Macho Burrito and a margarita as big as my head.

NaBloPoMo Day 29: Food

Today’s NaBloPoMo Prompt: What do you think makes a good photograph?

When it comes to literary criticism, I am of the “reader response” school, which among other things says the reader brings something to a text, which can make it good or bad (or whatever). I’d say the same goes for photography. One man’s porn is another man’s who-cares

I use “porn” in the loosey-goosey sense popularized on Reddit with such photo-centric collections as “earth porn” (pictures of breathtaking landscapes) “abandoned porn” (pictures of decrepit, rotting interiors) and even “people porn” (non-nude non-erotic non-prurient pictures of human beings).

But that doesn’t mean any old picture is good just because someone might say so. At least not for me- I think some effort can be put into making a photograph better than just pointing and clicking.

Depth of field, exposure, saturation, color balance, all should be considered and either planned for or corrected. I’m a big fan of post-production work to make my photos better.
But framing is also hugely important, something that cannot always be corrected for. I’m always looking to make my photos balanced. Using the rule of thirds, and breaking it to make compelling shots.

Photos that capture a bit if history, photos that tell a story. Not in the plot, rising action, climax sense, but in the sense of “something happened and something else will happen.” that is what lets the viewer bring his or her own thoughts to the photo.

Today’s NaBloPoMo Photo Prompt: Food

Tuna mayo walnuts raisins dried cranberries red onion salt pepper sour dough.

A photo posted by Jason Edwards (@bukkhead) on

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