Aw Diddums

Black Cat from the U.S.

I was mulling over ideas for an image contest I might enter… not having settled for anything yet, I looked through a gallery of stock images for white cats. The search term didn’t work that well and I ended up with all sorts: black cats, torties, tabbies, Siamese, Tonkinese, grey cats, tigers, cougars, women in costume…

At first I was just flipping through, stopping at this picture or that, thinking “this one would look good but I would have to paint the tail in” and so on. After a while, I got sad. My tinnitus changes to suit my mood (and reinforce it, I suspect), so I heard the pop equivalent of plaintive violins. I can’t identify it. A male voice singing kindly, as if over a guitar in the deepening summer dusk. A little bit distant, as though I looked over to the next hill slope and he’s sitting there in the honey-warm heather, warbling away on his own.

It’s a wonder I haven’t just drifted away in my sleep… stopped breathing, as the world I live in is not this one! Some of those modelling photos made me uncomfortable: they brought it home to me that I’m surrounded by a host of people living on a different planet. If we’re all on that other planet, who’s on this one?

Back to the cats. I wondered what the unwitting feline models would think if they realized people were putting them in pictures of their own, painting them, or just looking at their cute little button noses from the other side of the world. Each cat was individual… I could imagine how I would have loved each one.

I’d just finished that sentence (not wearing hearing aids as they were tiring my ears) and there was a loud bang, one of those that you feel all through you. You thought somebody was attacking and threw your arms protectively round your head, then realize something fairly major has fallen down or exploded… by ‘fairly major’ I mean not just a pile of books toppling to the floor. I whipped round, my heart hammering. Samson was chasing a moth and had knocked over a heavy tower of tape cassettes.

He wasn’t in the least bit repentant, just chased the fluttering will ‘o the wisp all the way down the stairs and back again, even with me standing on the landing shaking a fist. I looked over my shoulder just now, and he was skulking round by the foot of the tower again… doesn’t care if he knocks it down. Chased him out of the room a second time, but he’s immediately come back.

Sigh.

Where was I?

“Each cat was individual… I could imagine how I would have loved each one.” Sitting looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths… and I believe them.

Why should that make me sad? I have Samson and Delilah (otherwise known as Springy and Squishy). I’m thinking of other cats I’ve known… Sharky heads the list, followed by Thor, Fusspot, Lucky, Tarquin, Scampi, and others. Tarquin was a black moggy with a white bib; I named him after a character in a Georgette Heyer novel. (Well, I was 12 or 14 or something like that). Mum said Tarquin was the stupidest cat she’s ever known. A comfortable, friendly boy though; I miss him.

Does this mean that we can never look at something we like with without feeling pain? The only item I can look at and think “I’ll never lose this,” is my bed!

The accompanying picture is one of the cats I hovered over for ages in the stock photo gallery… he has kind eyes and a modest expression like Thor. if I could have given him a hug, I would have. The original picture can be found at One White Whisker. The cloudy sky is one of mine.

Later, when Mum came upstairs, I told her about the tower of cassettes being knocked over. She said (unsurprisingly), “yes, I heard.” Then added, “my friends tell me it must be nice to hear somebody moving about the house.”

KABOOM.
“Who did that??? Don’t DO that!!!”
(Sound of cats thundering uncaringly up and down the stairs).

Footpath disappearing into dark trees

Pete is probably wondering what happened to the photos I said I would put here one day when he was photoless… it was the day I went out myself and took some pictures, just by chance. I sat down to look through them and they weren’t too awful, but then things started happening (just ordinary everyday things not worth blogging about) and I didn’t have time to put them up that day.

And so it went on over the next few days… a mixture of being busy doing other things or feeling too sleepy.

But today I spruced up two of the pictures… they’re not exciting or significant in any way, but they’re part of my everyday backdrop. There are no birds or butterflies, but I noticed a blurry spot which was either a bee or a hoverfly. I couldn’t see it clearly enough to make it out… maybe it was hoping I would blog about it.

Anyway, the first photo is of a little path up the side of a small hill. I used to go this way to work. I had a light summer coat which was a lovely fresh red, and it had a hood. I didn’t meet any wolves though…. not then.

The second picture is where I DID meet wolves, or should I say, on two separate occasions here, Thundercloud and I were set upon by those unleashed hounds from hell. It’s from the wrong viewpoint (this is actually the route the hounds from hell were taking when they spotted us… we were coming down at right angles to this). Maybe if I do another Diddums Tour with my camera, I can go to the very spot where… (distant sound of ferocious baying)…. oh, wait a minute.

Dog pack trail

Funny how quickly things change… a couple of days ago the PC was rendering Apophysis fractals, but tonight it’s rendering a 3D scene in Bryce. Life would be very dull if there was only one thing to do. I wouldn’t have thought of it but there’s a minor contest for science fiction images. My bent is much more towards fantasy, but I came across a folder of unused 3D scenes which were quite promising. Maybe, with a little work, they would fit.

Looking at the other entries, it hasn’t a snowball’s chance… but it’s literally the taking part that counts; lots of fun and new ideas.

I didn’t come here to bore everyone senseless (oh, well maybe I did, but not deliberately). I was thinking about how people make certain decisions that X is OK but Y is not… for instance, traditional photography versus digital photography. All kinds of photography versus manipulation or ‘tweaking’. Those are very broad examples; the individual permutations of biases and prejudices are endless. “I despise the brushed metal effect,” is one phrase I came across a while ago. Nobody bothered to reply. What he really meant that he thought it was overused by uncool people. On a Come Dine with Me show, someone said “you used one of those two-handled things to open the wine. The RIGHT way to open wine is…” and my mother and I looked at each other.

X is cool, the right kind, the right way, used by the right people. Y is not.

These biases start young. I was rambling round one of the arty sites and came across a conversation where someone was required to describe the process of photomanipulation. Despite the friendly reply from the photomanipulator, the enquirer dismissed it as ’simply cutting and pasting the images of other users’. That’s not necessarily true; photomanipulators aren’t barred from using their own images. And if they just cut and pasted things, they would probably not look good… there is much more to it than that.

If you think about painting a picture (traditional media), you might have a still life specially set up in the studio (various items taken out of their own environments and placed together in an attractive way). If you think about photography, there are portraits of people perched against backgrounds, graduates wearing cheesy grins and clutching false rolled-up certificates (slightly battered round the edges), models wearing evening gear and make-up. When you took a photo of wild nature on holiday, you waited for a break in the crowds of other tourists and angled the shot to avoid the telephone pole and picnic signs. Then, people enjoy movies and fiction, but they’ve never been real.

I’m referring to the expectation that photos etc are worth nothing if they are not a real, true representation of the subject. If the sunset is peachy pink and there’s a boat on the water, it should remain peachy pink with a boat on the water. I don’t understand that, as there’s nothing 100 percent natural or ‘true’ about any of it. That same stretch of sky could be glorious blue and gold tomorrow. What we see out of our own eyes or perceive with our own minds is never the full, eternal truth; still less committing it to a piece of paper and saying “this is last night’s sunset.” It’s not a sunset… it’s a piece of paper.

There’s nothing ‘true’ about painting, photography, sculpture, drawing…. none of it.

As for the ‘using other people’s stuff’ thing, well… provided you make a good image and credit the original photographers / artists (who gave permission in the first place), or avoid all of that and use your own stock anyway, then I don’t see a problem. It’s still work: searching out the images you want; using tools, skills, the mind’s eye… trying to achieve a particular result. Sometimes the ‘cheat’ is much harder to pull off than the real thing.

In the conversation I mentioned, the photomanipulator asked if the other person would like to try that genre. No, said the other person – she would never do it… she preferred to stick with the usual kind of art.

I went to see who this philistine was, and what sort of art she went for, and I didn’t find much there to support. It was all one kind of thing (not terribly adventurous) and not particularly well done. But before I got too sneery in the privacy of my own room, I checked her profile… and she was only 14.

Ah. She’s got time yet. I’m sure I was dismissive of things (and stuck in an artistic rut) when I was 14, but in time I learned life is never black and white. Rather to my dismay. Then again, what would art be if we didn’t have other shades to play with?

Tagged by Kaz! I’m still impressed.
I particularly like the idea of adding pictures. Here’s my effort:

5 things in my bag:

I don’t have a bag any more: I have a trolley. The cats are curious to see what’s inside – they pop casually out of the top after a wee scrimmage around. I don’t keep them in there, though, so they’re not included in the following list.

1: Conversation notepad and my favourite pen (from Staples).

2: Cheap necklace of a dragon. Bought as a small gift for someone but still rattling around in my trolley.

3: Mobile phone. There is no QWERTY pad, so it’s a pain to text with.

4: RNLI luggage label, in case Bluebird (my trolley) gets himself lost.

5: Pentax microfibre lens wipe. It was bought twenty years ago for my Nikon camera, but is great for cleaning my specs. I have three dotted around the house as they’re never where I want them.

5 favourite things in my ROOM:

For ‘my’ room I’m talking about the one I’m sitting in: the sitting room upstairs. As the cats aren’t currently in it, they won’t be making it into this list either.

1: The bears. The white one sat with Fusspot the Siamese near the fire when he was unwell. The other softies belong to Mum, but they (and the black furry hat) sought sanctuary in here when she threatened to send them to charity. They are all quite big; the croc is over a metre long, but the brown bear is the biggest.

2: My bureau. I inherited it directly from a family member (that is, it wasn’t left to the family, it was left to me). I wish the kittens didn’t think it was brilliant fun to climb it by leaping on the shallow slope with all their claws out. Scratches are just about visible in the photo. The thing stuck on the glass is a monster cut from cheerful birthday paper. The monsters were blu-tacked to a door at my old house, and I’m not quite sure how they got over here.

3: Bluebird my trolley. Will go with me anywhere at any time without grumbling, and takes the weight of our shopping. On his own he is very lightweight, and can be collapsed flat when the car is full.

4: Disney print from The Jungle Book 1967. I bought it because it reminded me of my relationship with my sister. Which of us is which character, do you think? The answer is somewhere here.

5: The computers. Look at this pair… Mac and PC, cheek by jowl. You see the poor old PC in the middle of rendering an Apophysis fractal. It has six and a half hours left to go. I up-prop the keyboard so that the cats won’t tramp about on it and spoil the render. If you’re curious about the wallpaper on the Mac, you can find it here. It’s not by me, but I wish it was.

5 things I always wanted to do.

1: Write a book!!! (Yes, I know that’s an empty desire shared by millions).

2: See Africky again.

3: Get much more powerful computers, with all the rendering and graphics applications I could ever wish for (plus all the storage).

4: Enjoy my job (whatever it might be) so fully you couldn’t tear me away from it (brain fog without the guilt).

5: Escape into a time-suspended zone of my own so that by the time I’m fully refreshed and ready to face life again, I can pop out to discover that no time at all has gone by. The zone must not be Narnia, but it’s a similar idea.

5 things I’m currently into:

1: Computer graphics and digital photography.

2: Dean Koontz books, preferably the non-flippant ones. (I didn’t like Life Expectancy, which was about a clown, a baker, and people having babies).

3: Instant Mocha coffee. I thought there could be nothing better than Morrison’s instant mocha, but I was wrong. The star of the evening is now Nescafe Double Choca Mocha.

4: Blogs – I don’t know what I would do without mine and the community here.

5: Idling (of course!)

5 Persons to TAG:
Since I tagged people for my last one, I’ll let this one slide. Go ahead with the meme if you’re in the mood. Pictures are not required, but might make it more fun.

Samson was tagged by Pearl over in Shu’s Small World, and is mighty chuffed! Says it’s a weird feeling to have a lovely blue cat (is she blue?) come flickering out of nowhere, give him a playful swat, then vanish again. But maybe he can do the same to a few others – should be interesting to try. If a big cream cat appears all of a sudden, don’t scream… it’s just Samson.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago.
This one’s easy – I wasn’t born then. The cat before me had just about been born himself. He was a Grand Premier (though not 10 years ago!) I’m not sure I will bother, myself – maybe one day, but I’m not in a hurry.

2. 5 things on my to-do list for today.
Eat, sleep, roam around my territory, chase wasps, and toss the fake mouse a few times (if I can’t get a live one).

3. Snacks I enjoy.
Just our usual meals, preferably meat rather than fish. Anything else isn’t food. Delilah eats Stilton, salmon, and cheesy crisps, but I don’t fancy any of that myself.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire.
Retire to my own private island with Delilah, Diddums and her mother. The island will have any number of fresh springs we can drink from.

5. Three of my bad habits.
Using the litter box just as Diddums sits down to rest with coffee or lunch; constantly demanding to have the tap turned on for me; getting my eye scratched during play (I’m recovering from my fourth scratch, or is it my fifth?)

6. Five places I’ve lived.
Small village where I was born. And then this room here – corner of the sofa, squeezed down as far as I could go. Then I moved behind the computer desk, sometimes switching to the book shelf, where I hunkered down behind the piles of books. Then there was the top of the tallest unit in the room. Now I live downstairs in the cat hammock beside the front door. It’s a great address… catches lots of heat at night from the radiator, and a warm golden pool of sunlight in the morning.

7. Five jobs I’ve had.
Friend to Diddums; companion to my playmate Delilah; a little excitement in the life of Cheeky (who still likes to ambush us); park keeper; somebody for Diddums to blog about. That’s five.

I tag…. your pet or animal companion! *Pow!* A big cream cat appears and thumps into your leg like a particularly heavy sack of sand.

Tutorial finished… it gave me two pictures to put in my online art gallery. The first was so-so (I didn’t like the red and pink colour combination but the thing had a life of its own!) so I made another with colours more to my taste.

Today I didn’t have to walk Thundercloud, so I walked Mum instead, taking my camera along. Ran out of film (or rather card space) in the first five minutes, having taken the 512MB card instead of the 1GB card. It was a bit bright for photos anyway – it was 3pm but felt (and looked) more like noon.

I was annoyed when I framed a nice shot of the footpath with overhanging trees, “ah, lovely, just trees and Mum wandering gently along,” finger tightening on the shutter… and two sweaty joggers shot past me into the frame. I didn’t even hear them coming.

I didn’t ask for that, cosmos.

The photo you see here isn’t that one, but it has Mum in it. Get out the magnifying glass.

This still isn’t the blog post I was planning, but when I found the TV Creature Survey by Pete from Thequacksoflife, I wondered which animal characters from film in general I would place as my top ten. This is my list (in order of importance):

1. The Angry Beavers
2. Scrat (from The Ice Age)
3. Puss in Boots (from Shrek)
4. Hammy the squirrel (from Over the Hedge)
5. Sid the sloth (from The Ice Age)
6. The Wombles (if I had to pick one, it would be Orinoco… or possibly Wellington)
7. Salem (black cat from Sabrina the Witch)
8. Kaa the python (from Disney’s The Jungle Book)
9. The Pink Panther
10. Black Beauty (from the old TV series)

I love Winnie the Pooh when safe between the covers of his book, but I can’t stand the TV versions… very dull. That’s why he’s not on this list.

I have a Disney print (a find from a charity shop, carefully attached to my cork board) of Shere Khan throttling Kaa with one lazy fist. You’d have to see it to appreciate the humour of their expressions, but I bought it because it reminded me of my relationship with my sister. Our Chinese Zodiac animals are Tiger (sister) and Snake (me).

Looking at it just now, I see a photo of Sharky on the board too – it has swung loose and slipped round to rest on top of Kaa in the picture… maybe he’s still trying to protect me!

Funny, I deliberately posted a picture (on a wallpaper site) that I didn’t like that much, and it almost immediately got favourited by someone. Just shows, you never know what others might like.

Why did I post it? I’m entering into a period of confusion where I want to post nice things but don’t want to post things that are too nice, just in case someone pinches them… then I ask myself why I really care.

I never posted any short stories on the internet; that was a ground rule from around 2001 or whenever I first got online. Now I don’t know… I mean, I’ve got this blog; that has short stories of my life. Sometimes I think I should just enjoy myself and not worry too much. Where pictures are concerned I’m practising, and looking at other people’s pictures (and tutorials) for inspiration. There’s a bit of give and take involved.

I find myself looking at a picture and thinking “mm, I love that one,” and putting it carefully away. “For another day,” I tell myself. Maybe never… or maybe one day I’ll be so good that I’ll post today’s rainy day pictures without a second thought.

I suppose that’s the aim.

Last night I was looking through a computer folder of pictures and other scraps, and suddenly came across this:

I was so startled I laughed… had forgotten it was there. I sketched it very roughly one night when we were in bed. He was waiting patiently while I wrote something, and I noticed the shadow he cast upon the wall.

In an odd kind of way it feels more ‘real’ than any of his most perfect photos.

I needed a little comfort before going to bed, so this is it. I’ll set WordPress to post it at some future point so that my last two blog posts aren’t pushed out of the top spot too quickly… this one is really for me.

Last night I dreamed I was looking at my blog and noticed that a lot of my text was in boxes. I was shocked, and thought to myself “I must let them out – otherwise people will be saying I keep my words in cages.”

Odd dream.

Do you ever think to yourself, “Oh no – I’ve got to take a photo of that now, or I’ll forever be kicking myself for letting the moment slide”? I do that every time I look outside and there’s a lovely fluffy red sunset. Or an interesting cloud. Or my cats are curled up symmetrically, light and dark, yin and yang.

When you go out without your camera, that’s one thing; you just shrug; “Pity I don’t have it with me. Maybe tomorrow.” But when you see something and the camera is right there, you have no excuse – you must drop whatever you’re doing and reach for it; take it out of its case, turn it on, remove the lens cap and out you go, muttering and mumbling. “Wretched beautiful sunset, I don’t have time for you right now. I would rather be reading NaBloPoMo posts.”

But time, tide and sunsets wait for nobody.

This is tonight’s – a sweeping November sunset with bits of flashed-out bush caught in the frame.

November 2006
© Diddums