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reflection...   I must find a place to hide, a place for me to hide...

  Okay...

  I'm not much of a holiday person.

  Easter is just one of those holidays that brings back a lot of bad memories for me. It must be the whole full moon, spring equinox thing. Everything just lines up bad for me, I guess.

  I don't really want to go into any of it - suffice to say that I've been poisoning myself with colossal amounts of alcohol for the last three days.

  By the way...

  I apologize to anyone who sent me an e-mail recently. I've been kind o' busy. I do plan on responding. So I wasn't being a dick, or anything. Between work and play, I just haven't had time.

  At least the whole dizziness thing cleared up. It took about two weeks, and now, I'm happy to report that I haven't been hit with any vertigo for over a week.

spent most of the long weekend with this guy - my new best friend...

  I also might be leaving Sealy for another job. Actually, it's a job I held before. I might be going back to work for the United States Government. I scored in the top two percent on the entrance exam, and I've had my interview. I'm waiting for either a phone call or a letter now. A phone call would be some one telling me where and when to report for ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/28/Can-you-give-me-sanctuary
mike   or...

  Mikey through the looking glass?

  Anyway...

  I've had an interestingly boring couple of days.

  It began Wednesday night with a trip to the emergency room. While I was at work, I began experiencing what could only be described as violent dizziness. It panicked me. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on. I could barely stand up. I began wondering if some one had spiked my Fanta Grape. I called my supervisor on the radio to ask him if he was in his office. He said he was. I told him that I was having a problem and that I would be up.
  The walk up there was this Carnival of Souls experience that I won't soon forget. My sense of depth was totally skewed and I could barely keep myself level. It was like being shit drunk without the fogged brain thing I'd normally associate with that condition. Nancy (who works in the warehouse) saw me as she was going on break, and helped me the rest of the way.

  After some discussion, it was determined that I should seek medical treatment. I called my mom (she lives within walking distance of the plant), and she picked me up and took me to the emergency room.

  The car ride up was an adventure. My eyes wouldn't focus on anything and the road in front of me kept shifting and spinning. The motion of the car seemed to make it all worse.

  After a long wait, a saline solution plugged into my right arm, a CAT scan, some blood work, and some valium to help with my equalibrium, the doctor t ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/27/Death-makes-angels-of-us-all
  Wow...

  After what had to be the most miserable night I've ever had at work tonight...

the waning eclipse

While I was walking out to my car and looking up at the sky to see if I could salvage some sanity after tonight's chaos, I noticed that the moon was waxing full - but there was something distinctly wrong with it...   I couldn't think of what it was...   Then it dawned on me...   A total lunar eclipse!   The sky was somewhat cloudy, but I thought if I could rush home, I could capture it...   ummm...

  I dunno...

  I guess I couldn't be that lucky, huh?


the clouds rolled in...

  It clouded back up.

  Undaunted (and pro'ly a bit looney), I stayed out on the porch to wait for another opportunity. I got some. Frickin' seventeen degrees out, my hands got a bit numb, but I got some good shots of the waning eclipse:


waxing/waning - it was a moon that couldn't make up its mind...

  I tried different apertures and shutter speeds, but the full moon can be a tough thing to focus in on. A lot of the shots w ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/26/A-Total-Eclipse-of-the-Heart-A-Total-Lunar-Eclipse
  I figured out what to do with all of the overtime money I made...

  Camera equipment. Lots of it.

the moon

I got a couple of wicked Kodak lenses to augment my Z650, a wide angle, panoramic deal and a telephoto. Some of the results of which can be viewed further down in this blog.   I also purchased a "gently used" Kodak P880 on eBay for a couple hundred bucks. I've heard nothing but good things about the camera, and once I have it, I'll be able to share accessories from the Z650 with it - like the Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 1.4x 55mm Telephoto Lens I just received.   Bummer though...

  The Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 0.7x Wide Angle Lens (55mm) will be lost on the P880. From what I've read, the camera won't function well with it. Another downside will be having to purchase 52mm filters. I don't mess with filters much, at least not yet. All I ever really use is a UV filter and a circular polarizer.

  Anyw ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/25/Parts-of-me-are-drowned-in-perpetual-tide
  Nobody tells you where to go from there.

  Wow...

  The Kodak Gear tripod I picked up from Amazon.Com is like totally cool!

  After the sky cleared out a bit, I went out back tonight for a little while to snap some pictures of old friends, namely Canis Major and Taurus the Bull.


"Dog Star" (or Sirius, the most prominant star in Canis Major)

  and...


"Bull's Eye" (or Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, surrounded by the Hyades Cluster)

  Bummer though...

  I only had a window of about a half an hour before the sky clouded back up. These two pictures were about the best I could do. I live in a highly light-polluted area - which is another reason why tonight was a good night for this: new moon. New moon essentially means no moon. No big white blob in the sky throwing stray light all over the place. I mainly intended this to be an exercise in exposure times and magnification limits for photographing stars with my Kodak Z650.

  I dunno...

  I think I was more jazzed about looking up at Orion and his friends above me with the tripod controls in my hands. I felt like a teenager again (yes, my adolescent years were very depressing) with my first telescope.

  I guess I'll go back to watching The Odd Couple. I got the first three seasons on DVD recently...

  If you'd care to
blackbird in a tangled forest

  I'm working more with my new-ish camera, experimenting with PASM, especially shutter speeds, ISO settings, and exposure times. My goal is to get better acquainted with astrophotography. I spend most of my awake time at night, so I'm attempting to adjust my photographic pursuits to accomodate it.

  I picked up on a new tripod to replace one that broke on me a little while back. I got a good deal on a Kodak from Amazon.Com. Ten bucks, believe me, I'm not complaining. With delaying shutter speeds, it's crucial to have a steady base to work from.

  I can finally afford a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, but I'm gonna hold off on buying it for a little bit. I'm gonna wait on my income tax return, so I can get some wicked accessories to go with it. Photography is becoming more of a passion for me, and I want to mess around with some more serious equipment.


the moon can be a semi-tricky subject to take an acceptable picture of

  ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/23/Though-it-all-looks-different-now-I-know-its-still-the-same
  I don't have a life anymore.

  I have a job.

  I have time for nothing else besides work. I'm working like over fifty hours a week. I have to work the next three Saturdays, including this one. I've worked the past two Saturdays. By the time Sunday comes around, I'm too damned tired to even get out of bed.

  I'm losing even more weight. When I get out of the shower and look in the mirror, I just wonder where I'm going. I'm down two more pant sizes. I haven't been this light since I was a freshman in high school - and I was three inches shorter back then.

  The money is phenominal though...

  I go out for an hour or two every Saturday night after work (depending upon how soon I can get out of there), but it's nearly impossible to relax. By the time the end of the week comes around, I'm run down so damned ragged that my brain won't stop trying to angle and wangle. Running this department on second shift has become an every day exercise in being given a set of impossible circumstances and being expected to accomplish everything against nearly insurmountable odds. I keep delivering the goods (literally), but I'm burning out, and I can see myself slipping here and there.

  I guess I keep doing it because I literally have nothing better to do. If I were to stop, I don't know what I would do with my time anymore.

  Nine hour days are a minimum anymore. I got out of work at eleven thirty (a half an hour late) only once since we started the plant back up on the second of this month. I went to Wal-Mart tonight because I was ridiculously low on stuff. I didn't even enjoy it. I didn't get there until after one o'clock in the morning, and it was a race against time trying to cram everything I needed ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/21/Hate-me-today-Hate-me-tomorrow
  How should I begin this?

  Another x-mas has passed me by. Another year in this stinking, god-forsaken sewer of a world. Another twelve months of agony, trying to face humanity with dignity and grace, and barely keeping it all together only to show the world a mask of indifference. Another three-hundred and sixty-five days of searching for an angel's face in humanity's broken statuary, only to find the pain of others which either equals or exceeds my own. Some of that pain I manufactured for them, and some of it was manufactured - tailor-made just for me.

  No...

  I can't begin this piece of prose like that. I may want to. I may need to. Hell, I might even bullshit myself into thinking that there's no other way...

  ...but there is another way.


ya better watch out... ya better not cry...

  Sometimes it's difficult to know who your friends are in this place. Sometimes, it's even more difficult to see them.

  I've destroyed myself so many times.

  It's like peeling back the layers of a rancid, rotten orange, looking for good fruit and finding only filth more rotten than the crap you've thrown away beneath each putrid layer. Maybe my tenacity has finally paid off. Maybe there's actually something in me worth saving.

  This past weekend I hit total and absolute rock-bottom in my soul. I destroyed anything and everything that Michael Rogers was. I set out to do it. It was deliberate. I ingested more poison into me than I ever thought possible - beer, liquor, capped it off with a couple of sleeping pills, and fell into my usual Saturday night weekend coma. By the end ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/20/Back-and-forth-the-struggle-consumes-us-all
  Hey Maria, thanks again for the cell phone bill...

  Just kidding.

  Really...

  Anyway...

  I know I'm in a minority here, but I despise the holiday season thing. Not only is it just a blatant, month-long reminder to me about how much I missed out on in this life, it's a travesty of traffic where people drive like they're total loons with the attitude of "Fuck you! It's x-mas! I can drive however I feel like!"

  I hate x-mas trees. Who ever came up with that concept anyway? Let's go out in the woods, kill a tree by cutting it down, then drag it home, throw it in the middle of our living room, decorate it, and watch it die a slow and painful death. What the hell IS that? I dunno. I just wish it would all go away already.

  I did what little x-mas shopping I needed to do totally online this year to avoid the holiday assholes. When I shop, I like to be leisurely about it - I normally enjoy shopping quite a bit. I don't dig the experience being all about stress and aggravation. If I'm looking for stress, I can go to work and get it there.

  Yes, I'm totally fucking Scrooge...

  I DO celebrate x-mas in my own way - the original Roman way. X-mas is actually a bastardization of the pagan (Roman) Festival of Jupiter (Jesus was born in the summer, people... ), and I honor Zeus in the same fashion that the Romans did - total debachery!

  Okay...

  Enough of my ranting about all this shit, right?

  Let's have a nice, tranquil image...


caged angels...

http://www.damnage.com/post/index/19/Propped-up-by-lies-and-promises
  I'm not all that much for holidays. I guess, for a man like me, all they really represent is what's missing in my life. You can bullshit yourself and say you've got the stamina to run the whole race by yourself, but sometimes you realize that there're certain things you missed out on in life.

  I spent my Thanksgiving hung over on my couch watching football. I didn't really plan it that way - actually, I didn't really plan it any particular way, that's just how it worked itself out.


lady on the lake

  I was off from work for five straight days. It's okay, but I'd really rather just go back to my job. I always say that I'm no good on my own. I need structure and boundries. I don't like to be off of work for more than two or three days - anything beyond that, and I can get into trouble.

  Sunday was neat. Rob came over. We watched football, ate pizza, and laughed our asses off for most of the afternoon and evening. It was a great day for football. The Bears won. The Raiders actually won against the Chiefs, and Philadelphia played their guts out against New England. We watched Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko after the eight o'clock game was over.

  I spent the rest of the weekend at Ole Tyme Charlie's gettin' loopular...

  I also picked up a nifty little cold, which blossomed a bit in my lungs today, and kept me from getting work done on my car this morning. It sucks. It was cold and raining out today, and I didn't want to take the chance of going out in it and making myself worse. I have to go to work tomorrow no ..]]> http://www.damnage.com/post/index/18/They-throw-me-a-bone-just-to-pick-me-dry