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I've had various quotes and thoughts lingering in a text file or two, that have been meant as ingredients for post or two. Those dishes however, have sadly not come about. Instead of forcing myself to write something about them but not losing the catalyst that would have begun the reaction, I've decided to collect and dump them in this post. If they inspire you, so much the better.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think,--rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.--BEATTIE.

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Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory.

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Nihilistically Astute Sesquipedalian

Sesquipedalian = The act or practice of using large words when smaller words will do.

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The magic behind Bridget's Sexiest Beaches is that watching Bridget Marquardt is like watching the joy of a toddler discovering the world, like how doorknobs work, or how food on a spoon is sometimes like an airplane flying into your mouth.

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The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie. --ZIMMERMANN.

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I have this dream more often than I'd like to admit.

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I'd be surprised if someone hasn't mentioned this already but I figured I'd "tweet" about it on here. Course, it's more than a 120 characters as most ideas are.

Much has been made about the use of Twitter in the aftermath of the Iranian election. How CNN et al missed the ball and how we are now getting first hand accounts of what is really going on in Tehran and other parts of Iran. I too think this is amazing but I worry about it's implications.

Radio has been used to direct mobs to attack people or homes during these types of situations whether for political or purely personal reasons. We have already seen Internet bullying on Facebook and Myspace. Add these together and you have an incredible haystack just waiting for a match. In fact, it is a lot easier for someone to use a situation like this for personal gain, given the anonymity and access of Twitter. There are plenty of assholes out there who feel they've been slighted by someone. Why not tweet "Person X is pro whatever. His address is X. Get him!"? By the time the mob realizes (if it ever does) this is false, the damage is done.

Now, I'm not saying this is a reason to block Twitter. I'm not a reactionary. I do think all problems and side effects should be acknowledged and hopefully addressed so we don't have jackasses pontificating later that no one saw this coming. Every technology has pros and cons. We, as intelligent people, must learn and accept them not ignore and scapegoat them.

Nor am I saying the Iranian people would do this. What I am saying is that the conditions are right for such a tragedy to occur. The same could happen after an upset soccer match in Brazil or a police shooting in L.A. It's all about the conditions not the people.

Mob mentality is already an incredibly indiscriminate and destructive force. The power for anyone to direct this chaos is dangerous. While once you are in the throes of a mob your judgment gets sidelined, please have some common sense to realize that everything coming over the Twitter wire is not fact.

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In an e-mail conversation with Aaron (gotta help that SEO rank), we talked about a fellow photographer Ryan Brenizer's pledge to blog for 100 days straight.

While I'm sure Ryan (who Aaron and I have each met on separate occasions although neither of us would he call a friend) has good intentions, his idea does irk me. My response to Aaron follows as such:

See I don't see blogging every day as something that's good. If you have interesting content post about it. But if you force yourself to blog you end up posting bullshit that no one cares about like Jeff Revell or Scott Bourne. You end up making tip lists or speed links that are at best worth a cursory glance. Ugh and don't get me started on Kelby posting about not having time to post. WTF. Yeah, who gives a fuck. I can tell you couldn't post anything because nothing was posted!

I think blogging is helpful and interesting at times but like anything most people who do it seem to take it too seriously or mistake it for what it is. A successful blog is one that posts consistently, sure. But one that posts consistently interesting work. That is more important than every day.

So say I, Geoff "The Blog King" Greene.

Yes, I did sign it "The Blog King". Since it's on a blog, it must be true.

While rereading what I said pretty succinctly sums up my thoughts, I guess I should expand.

Jeff, Scott and Kelby are all great photographers and post interesting things. My issue is to me they feel compelled to post things just because it's there at times. Reblogging or creating lists of blog posts on other sites. This is helpful in it's own right sure but on the whole it's largely useless. I'm reminded of this quote from Merlin Mann:

Some days, the web feels like 5 people trying to make something; 5k people turning it into a list; and 500MM people saying, "FAIL."

Blogging, which begat Twitter/Facebook/everything, is about giving volume to your voice. Some of those out there have larger speakers than the majority but we all have a set of speakers just the same. Theirs just go to 11. Treat your blog as you would treat your own voice. Say what you mean to those who want to hear it. Say what you are thinking because others may be thinking it as well. You are not a 24/7 radio. You do not need to be constantly broadcasting.

I guarantee suspect that you will be happier, your readers will enjoy your work more and your SEO rank won't drop a bit.

Now, I'm going to have the affront to post this on both my main and photography blog. zOMG, the SEO horror!

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I just don’t think magazine publishers understand — most content today that they produce isn’t worth paying big money for. The topics are predictable. The coverage is bland and generalized. The interviews are cookie-cutter. And so much of the magazine is filled with advertisements that — a) don’t speak to me as a reader, b) fail to provide me with any action that I can easily take, or c) don’t relate in any significant way to the content that I am paying to review — that I barely get any content in the first place. - original

Wow, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Jenn and I subscribe to several magazines ranging from Gourmet and Travel&Leisure to Maxim and Popular Photography (alright I subscribe to the last two). I save these in large stacks through the year and count them up in my year end numbers post. Afterwards, I go through the magazines and rip out the articles or pictures I want to hang on to while recycling all the rest. Whether I go through these saved pages later is questionable but it does cut down on the space they take up.

I say this because I look at quite a few magazines. And to a one, they all suffer from the above quote. Gourmet, Bon Appetit and Travel&Leisure are so chock full of ads, ads which try to trick you into thinking they're articles in the magazine, that the amount of content is pitiful and usually pushed so far into the back of the magazine you hardly remember what was on the cover. Maxim and the other lad mags aren't much better but they don't make any pretensions about what they're product is (answer: boobs). GQ and Style have over 25 pages of ads before you even get to the contents page.

It's a watered down product that insults you as a consumer. I didn't buy your magazine to consume ads. I bought it to consume content which sadly most magazines lack.

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The gym is imposing as you enter it, a mammoth building whose greedy maw devours everyone and anyone in the allure of physical fitness. It's siren call draws you in at first but the monthly membership fee is what keeps us chained to it. For you must go to the gym. To stay in shape. To stay physically fit. To feel good about yourself.

The first thing you smell, as the doors open, a tangy aroma which is the unmistakable mixture of sweat and chlorine wafting from the pool. The antiseptic yet musty smell makes you queasy and immediately transports you back to gym class in high school. Most of us are fairly ignorant to smells in detail but this one is poignant. It tells you, I am in a gym and it's not going to get any better than this.

Your first destination is of course the locker room because you either need to change or unload at least some accessories. And invariable in said locker room you will find an old man who is, if not stark naked then wearing simply white underpants and the de rigeur black socks. Always the black socks hitched as high as they can go. The old man does not care. It's a locker room and he has long since stopped caring who see's his flesh.

And you do see his flesh. You see the orchards of wrinkles on parts of his body you didn't know could have wrinkles. Wrinkles so deep that they each have a story to tell if only you would visit. You look away but it is too late. The image haunts you even with tightly closed eyes but deep down the old man has taunted you. He has shown you your mortality. For as much as you strive and work at the gym, that is your inevitable fate. You will be as wrinkled and hunched as he is. Yes, once he was as taught and fit as you were. No more.

Yet he too is still chained to the gym. He has nothing more to gain from the gym besides a premature heart attack. But he continues.

And so it goes.

Fleeing the locker room, you emerge into a battalion of treadmills, bikes and elliptical machines each with it's own soldier, the only difference being the fatigues have been traded for skin tight spandex and t-shirts that read "Gold's Gym" or "American Family Fitness". It is your first destination, a casually beginning to your workout. You are amazed that despite the phalanx of war machines, you find it difficult to find a machine that is unoccupied or not out of order. Spying one as you do an empty parking spot at the mall, you jump and quickly begin your warm up.

Your eyes drift to the flat panel screens above you, either tuned to CNN or MTV, the antics on each making it almost indiscernible from the other. You chose CNN because you want to know what's going on in the world while you work out. What a great way to multitask you think to yourself. You cluck your tongue as Nancy Grace informs you about a missing little girl or berates a delinquent father, as does your neighbor on the treadmill beside you. If stopped to look at yourselves, you would shiver to think just how similar to chickens you were, each in your own cages.

After getting your heartbeat up, you move next to the other machines. The exercise machines which the torturers of medieval times would never have come up with in their wildest dreams but would have made good use of. The maze of equipment stretches out in front of you and you worry if you spend too much time reading the instructions whether others will realize how infrequently you have been coming to the gym. Better to jump on and start, whether it works the muscle group you need to break or not.

So you begin using an exercise machine with sixteen different moving parts so you can work out one single muscle in your lower back, diligently checking off what exercises you do on a clipboard to ensure a complete work out. As designed specifically for you by your personal trainer who is also the personal trainer to the guy beside you. But you don't waste too much time on any one machine for fear that that the hulk in the yellow wife beater who seams to breath muscles as he does three reps of 100lbs with just his toes will want to use the machine you are using. As if he would want to use the quad strengther. Which, amazingly, he does.

And so it goes.

The work out complete you change and return to the lobby. Before you leave, you look around. It's not like on TV. The gym is not filled with beautiful people. It is filled with overweight and out of shape people. With people drinking water from sports bottles while talking to their workout buddy while the spandex they are wearing earns it's paycheck despite the huge odds stacked against it. Young, middle age or old, you stare at them all with contempt.

At least you're not as bad as they are.

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