easy rider

Several phone calls. No one wants to talk. I go through periods of bipolar dispatches-times when you have to fight willing people off with stick and other times when people want you to pay them just to tell you their name.

I take a walk. The Wachovia down the street has closed. It's not fresh news, but it depresses me everytime I saunter by. A reminder that we are in a bad economy. Even bloodsucking banks can't make ends meet. At least there are no Starbucks on Ponce.

The assignment phone calls get less and less and suddenly you have to cut back. Less meat, less travel, less creature comforts. Film suddenly became my number one vice. Every photo lab in town raised their prices, again. I'm using digital here and there but it has no soul. I want scars in my pictures and a CMOS sensor does everything in its power to produce a pretty picture. I wish Nikon would offer discount cameras they dropped at birth. I'd be first in line.

Rain. Heat. High gas prices. Expensive food. Even the firefighters are getting laid off. Technically, as Americans, everything sounds bad. Until you're systemically hunted in the barren desert by government militias, you can't really say that we've hit rock bottom.

It's a bad time and no one has to like it. Personally, I still find optimism in the little things. It takes courage to have a sense of humor. When a man is out riding his motorcycle shirtless in skintight jeans, I figure things can't be all that shitty. A toast: to shirtless bikers.