What’s in your bag?

Since I recently wrote an article making fun of my wife’s addiction to purses as well as comparing her purses to miniature black holes, I thought it would be only fair to write about one of my own obsessions. To be honest, I would have never written this article, but I received several emails through both this blog and my photo blog (www.photo-guru.net) asking me the very question that has plagued photographers for at least a century – what camera bag to buy?

I am sorry to disappoint those few who actually read my blogs – THERE IS NO PERFECT CAMERA BAG.

Over the years, I have struggled with the obsession of finding the perfect bag, the one and only bag that would allow me to comfortably carry in every situation. The only thing that I achieved by this quest is a closet full of camera bags and my wife giving me weird looks every time I berate her for buying yet another purse.

There is no perfect camera bag, but I can tell you what I use. My most used bag is a Domke F6 knock-off. Domke makes wonderful canvass bags that last for years, don’t really look like camera bags and can fit a surprising amount of stuff. For more information on Domke bags, check out their website, http://www.tiffen.com/products.html?tablename=domke


You can buy the cheap Chinese-made knock-offs on eBay for about $30-$50 dollars, depending on the size and quality. I bought mine 15 years ago at a yard sale and it still serves me well. This bag is my primary camera bag for almost everything – weddings, journalism work and some types of travel photography. The bag fits a Canon 5D with either a 17-40 f/4 or 24-70 f/2.8 lens attached, a Canon 40D body without a lens attached, a 70-200 f/4 lens, a 50mm f/1.4, a Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 fisheye and a Canon 580EX flash. The side pockets have enough room for another flash and a lens, batteries, cables, filters and cleaning supplies.


Another cool thing about this particular bag is that it fits perfectly inside a Timbuk2 medium messenger bag. I often do this if I have to carry my equipment for long periods of time (the bike messenger distributes the weight a lot better than a camera bag), or if I go into bad neighborhoods. Another plus of having one bag inside another is that Timbuk2 bags are weatherproof, adding one more layer of protection for expensive equipment.

When I have to do commercial work, weddings, etc… and need more gear than I could fit in the Domke bag, I use two large wheeled suitcases that I bought at TJ Maxx for $50 each. I also bought Pelican foam inserts from B&H Photo and set up one suitcase to hold my studio lighting and second suitcase to carry extra photo equipment, like additional cameras, lenses and cables. This way I ended up with two excellent equipment cases for less than $200.00.
My second most used camera bag, and my most used everyday bag is a Timbuk2 medium bike messenger bag. That shapeless bag is so incredibly tough that it actually saved my life once when I fell off my bike and slid about fifteen feet on my back. Timbuk2 bags are really well made, waterproof and sit comfortably on your back no matter how much stuff you stick in there.

On most days, I use my Timbuk2 messenger bag to carry a MacBook laptop, a Holga camera, a Canon Powershot S5, books, notebooks, papers, etc… You can see the usual contents of my bag in the photo below.


I also made a three-compartment insert for the bag – you can buy similar inserts on B&H Photo (they are made by Domke or Tenba), but they are never quite the right size or shape (at least not for me). So with some canvas from JoAnn Fabric, some thin foam for padding and about 4 hours with a needle I made a custom insert that fits my needs. One of the dividers on the inside of the insert folds down, creating one large compartment and one small. With the insert in the bag, I can carry three lenses in the insert (or two lenses and a flash, or one lens and a DSLR with a lens attached), a laptop and a bunch of other small items.


The best part about using a messenger bag is that it does not look like a camera bag and you can get much more use out of it than from a specialized bag made by any of the known camera bag manufacturers.

What’s your perfect camera bag? I don’t know and I cannot recommend one. The best way to find out is to go to a large camera retailer store, bring your gear and see what fits and what doesn’t.

Oh, and don’t forget to take your camera out of the bag once in a while.

Today's Myths and Legends

I am a huge fan of urban exploration. I am also a sci-fi and fantasy geek. I am a photographer. I am a history fanatic. I am a programmer.

Once I put all these things together, the rest was obvious. I just had to create an online community for people such as myself as well as a centralized database for all things scary, made up, or forgotten.

The point of this project is to collect as much data as possible about current history – abandoned sites that present historical interest, urban legends, modern fairy tales, etc…

The site will hopefully go live by the end of February – I will announce more details as the date draws nearer. For now, the following is the “official” statement for the project.

Webster’s dictionary defines “history” as “a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account.” The keyword in this sentence is “PAST”. We concentrate on recording and trying to understand events that happened years, centuries and millennia ago, often forgetting that yesterday is part of the past as well.

Historians often overlook the modern past, ignoring the urban legends, the “old wives tales” and myths that are part of today’s culture.

As a child, I spent countless hours reading fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers. My parents had an extensive library of folk tales from different countries and they had to hide books from me so I would go to sleep at night. In my imagination, I fought dragons, rescued princesses and stood my ground against vicious pirates.

The legends of today are no less interesting or fascinating than the ones that have been written hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, most of them get ignored or discarded as simple superstitions that are not worth anyone’s attention. It would be a great shame if future generations would be denied the wonderful world of today’s folklore.

As a science fiction and fantasy genre geek, I was inspired to create this site by many amazing books that I’ve read throughout my life. The authors that had the biggest impact on this project are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Moore and, more recently, Elizabeth Kostova with her book The Historian. These authors did an absolutely incredible job researching folklore, mythology and urban legends for their books and integrating centuries of history into their stories.

I’m hoping that this website would collect modern myths and urban legends in one repository that could be used by historians, anthropologists and writers for their research and preserve today’s folklore for future generations.

Consequences of Being Punched in the Face

In one of my previous posts I mentioned getting assaulted at a local skating rink and being repeatedly punched in the face. If something like this had happened to a normal person, he or she would go to the emergency room to at least check for signs of concussion. However, being the big macho Russian that I am, I decided that seeing a doctor would not be manly enough, so I took copious amounts of Ibuprofen and patently waited for the swelling to subside.

Last Wednesday (January 16), about a week and a half after the accident, I was washing my face in the morning and I felt a piece of bone jutting out from under my left eye. Apparently, the swelling subsided enough so that I could feel the bone chip.

Freaking out, I ran out of the shower and called an ophthalmologist for an emergency appointment. To make a long story short, one X-ray and two CAT scans later, I found out that I had six broken bones in my face, further complicated by a potential leak of cerebral fluid into the sinus cavity.

On Friday, I was admitted to UPMC Presbyterian for a facial reconstruction surgery. The doctors had to re-break my cheek bone and set it into place, mend my left orbital bone with a plate and replace the back wall of my eye socket with a plastic mesh.

Being in the hospital for three days and spending the last four days half-conscious because of painkillers changed my perspective on a lot of things. Since I still suffer from post-surgical double vision, it is a little difficult to write. I’ll be posting more info and details that might be interesting even to those who are not hopped up on codeine.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Pretty much every American over the age of 2 has heard this slogan. Las Vegas is the largest tourist destination in the world, with well over 30 million people visiting every year. It is gaudy, garish, loud, and obnoxious, as well as every other derisive adjective that you can think of.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What they don’t tell you in tourist brochures is that what stays in Vegas is your money.

My wife and I are big on travel and every year we try to visit as many new places as our meager vacation days allow. This year we chose Las Vegas as our destination. I did not want to go. In my mind, I have always imagined that the only two reasons to go to Las Vegas are gambling and legalized prostitution. Since I don’t like to gamble and I am happily married, I saw absolutely no reason to go to Vegas. However, my wife and two of my friends decided otherwise and I was outvoted.

The disappointment set in as soon as we landed. At the Alamo counter, a nice, grey-haired gentlemen patiently explained to us that even though the rental car is included in our travel package, we have to pay 30% taxes and 46 dollars a day for insurance separately. We were too tired to argue and I just threw my credit card on the counter.

When we got to the hotel, we found out that the $6.95 buffet that was promised to us in the travel brochure is available only to club members – for us mere mortals it would cost $40 per person.

When we finally settled in and had dinner, we decided to go for a stroll along the famous Las Vegas strip and enjoy the night scenery. At first, I was impressed. With the cover of darkness hiding all the unsightly construction sites, the strip looks very presentable and eye-catching. We spent hours walking around, taking pictures in and around all the major hotels and casinos.


My “impressed” state of mind ended with a visit to the Venetian. At a glance, the place looks gorgeous, with its ceiling painted as a very realistic-looking sky, indoor and outdoor canals and gondolas. However, at a closer look it is nothing more than a giant mall for people with too much disposable income. After being inside for a few minutes, the beauty of the interior design was quickly overshadowed by the never-ending chain of Prada, Hugo Boss and Gucci stores.

Same thing happened in New York New York where we went to see Zumanity, a Cirque de Soleil show. The inside of the casino is designed to resemble old New York streets, complete with shops, delis, restaurants, street lamps and street signs. Once again, the whole thing was spoiled by the omnipresent slot machines and card tables.
I never understood the appeal of gambling. One morning, my friend and I got up around 7AM and went downstairs to buy breakfast for our wives. In any given hotel in Vegas you cannot possibly walk two steps without bumping into a slot machine. On our way to a bagel shop in the hotel lobby we had to walk through a smallish gambling area; I was shocked to recognize several people sitting in front of the one-armed bandits from last night. From the looks of it, they spent over 8 continuous hours playing the slots, chain smoking and drinking. And losing money…
An interesting fact about Vegas is that the first hotel on what became today’s strip was the Flamingo, and it was built in 1946 by a mobster by the name of Bugsy Siegel. The wise guy did not get to enjoy the fruits of his labor for too long – he was shot in the eye in his Beverly Hills home less than a year later.
It is impossible to take two steps on the Las Vegas Boulevard without some homeless-looking person pushing a hooker card into your hands. On some of the busiest stretches of the strip the peddlers stand in lines of as many as 20, all trying to pedal call girl advertisements. As an experiment, my friend and I called the number of one of the dozens of cards that we collected during the walk, and were politely told that we can invite a girl to our hotel room for a low price of $180 for entertainment only, and the rest would be “between us and the girl”.
The only redeeming things about this trip were excursions to the Death Valley National Park, the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon.

The Hoover Dam is truly a marvel of engineering. Call me a geek, a nerd, a dork, but I was impressed with the Hoover Dam hell of a lot more than with the shiny lights of Vegas. The gargantuan project was started in 1931 and completed in 1935. Considering the size of the dam and the technology available in the 1930s made me realize what an amazing feat of engineering the Hoover Dam actually is.
The Death Valley was exactly what it sounds like – a desert. We drove for a few hours, found a dry lake and drove around it at 120 miles an hour. When we got back to the hotel, I read an article about a guy who did the same thing until his car fell through the dry crust and stuck in mud underneath. The poor guy ended up dying of dehydration and winning one of 2005’s Darwin awards (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2005-05.html). I guess doing donuts on the lake’s bed wasn’t one of my brightest ideas.
The Grand Canyon is exactly what it sounds like – grand. It is one of the most breathtaking natural wonders that I have ever seen. Unfortunately, we spent very little time there – my friends did not dress for cold weather, and given how short winter days are, it got dark only a few hours after we entered the Grand Canyon National Park.
Next time I go out West, I am going to skip Vegas all together – it’s worth visiting for a day or two, but a whole week in the Sin City is way too much for my fragile psyche.

Grandfather's watch

My grandfather passed away on May 18^th, 1998.  His death was probably one of the most difficult things that my family and I had to deal with.  He had a very difficult life – Soviet Army, German prisoner-of-war camp, escape, arrest, death row substituted at the last moment with 11 years of hard labor camps.  Freedom after 11 years of back-breaking labor in the coal mines of Vorkuta only to find out that his entire family died in German concentration camps. 

My grandfather was not the easiest man to live with, but he raised me, played sports with me, and taught me how to fix and build things.  Towards the end of his life I was the only person that he trusted and he insisted that I have the power of attorney over him.  During the last two days of his life my grandfather never regained consciousness – he looked like a mummy, sustained only by morphine drip and an oxygen mask.  I was 20 years old at the time.  One day a very polite doctor called me at work and said that there was no chance of my grandfather coming out of the coma and that I should talk to my family about disconnecting him from the machine. 

I can honestly say that that decision was the most difficult thing that I have ever done.  And even though no one in my family blamed me for it for years I still felt guilty about pulling the plug. 

Shortly after my grandfather was buried my grandmother gave me his old watch.  Apparently the body of the watch is solid gold – it was the first expensive thing that my grandfather bought after being released from GULAG.  When she gave me the watch it was broken – the wind-up knob was stuck and there was no way to wind the watch.  Years ago I went to several jewelers/watch repairmen but everyone  I asked either told me that they could not fix a half-a-century old Soviet-made watch, or they looked too shifty and I didn't want to trust them with my grandfather's memory.

For 8 years the watch sat in a box in my closet.  Occasionally I would come across it and entertain the idea of fixing it.  And then the watch would go back to the closet.  A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend gave me a beautiful rosewood watch box for my birthday.  Even though I don't have many (actually any) expensive watches I've accumulated quite a few that have sentimental value to me.  As I was going through all my watches to place them in the box I came across my grandfather's watch once again.  This time I did not simply put it in the box – I wrapped it in a bit of soft cloth and took it to a Russian jeweler in Squirrel Hill – he came highly recommended as an honest dealer and not overly expensive.  Ten days and 60 dollars later I had my grandfather's watch back and in working condition. 

The weird thing is – after I put the watch on my wrist I felt the guilt that I carried all these years soft of fade away – it was as if my grandfather patted me on the shoulder and told me that everything is going to be OK.

Closet technology

For the past couple of months I have been going through more than a decade of backups, trying to organize terabytes of photographs, hundreds of essays and rants and dozens of software projects that have accumulated in my apartment since the dawn of the computer era. In the back of my closet I discovered a box with 78 floppy disks, some of which included the installation/system disks for MS DOS 3.0, Microsoft Windows 3.11 and an unidentifiable version of Novel.

I also found a box full of zip disks and even managed to dig out a zip drive so I could copy whatever useful data those disks contained. And even though most of the stuff on them was completely useless and the disks themselves quickly ended up in my garbage bin, I made a point of dragging my wife into the office, pointing at the dust-covered zip drive and triumphantly telling her that she can no longer yell at me for not throwing anything even remotely technology-related because it might be useful at some point in our lives. Wow, that was a really long sentence, and by the way, in order to get the zip drive to work, I had to revive and hook up and old computer with a parallel port. So there!

Let this completely pointless rant be a lesson to all geeks and non-geeks out there – if it looks like it might have anything to do with technology, do not throw it away. You never know when you might need your old toaster, a broken microwave oven and a 10-year-old floppy drive to build an evil robot and take over the world!

Military Intelligence

Drawing by Maria Malingowski

This particular story is presumably all true. It happened to one of my friends, Dima Berelovich. Dima immigrated to the United States in 1995 after serving in Kazakhstan’s army for two years. Some of the stories that he told me give a totally new meaning to the term "military intelligence". I wrote the story in the first person, just as he told it to me. Enjoy.

To prove once more that the term “military intelligence” is an oxymoron, the Kazakhstan “voenkomat”, or the army draft office sent me to a training school for military mountain guides. Upon my graduation, for reasons unknown to mere mortals, they stationed me in the desert, to serve with an outfit that guarded the area against Muslim rebels. To be completely honest, the “rebels” couldn’t care less about the political situation; for the most part they warred among themselves and their terrorist actions consisted mainly of throwing dead animals in local wells to poison water.

My outfit was stationed in the middle of nowhere; there was nothing to see besides the endless sea of sand for months at a time and, to put it mildly, we were bored. After a couple of months drinking became our favorite pastime. We drank everything that had alcohol in it – moonshine, rubbing alcohol from our first-aid kits and even toothpaste dissolved in water.

One day we realized that there was nothing left to drink. Fortunately, our survival training taught us to find ways out of even the most hopeless situations. Desperate to the point of insanity two guys from my outfit took one of our tanks, drove it to the nearest village and traded it for a lamb and two buckets of moonshine. Needless to say, we had quite a party that night.

When we woke up the next morning, a very unpleasant surprise was awaiting us – two generals from Alma-Ata (capital of Kazakhstan) decided to show up with a surprise inspection. Since a missing tank is not an easy thing to hide, the guys ended up confessing pretty quickly.

After several bouts of hysterical laughter the general gave these guys two options – either we get the tank back before the end of the next day, or the culprits get court-marshaled.

At sunrise we elected a delegation – five guys who would go to the village and attempt to bring back the tank. All of us threw money in the pot, a total of about 400 rubles; we felt bad about taking back the tank and leaving the old guy short a lamb and two buckets of moonshine.

Our hopes for a peaceful resolution did not come to pass - the old man met us outside the gates with an antique-looking double-barreled shotgun.

“Grandfather” – we bowed respectfully to the old man. “We need that tank back. If we don’t bring it back by tomorrow we’ll all go to jail. We’ll give you 400 rubles to pay for the stuff you gave us.”

The old man looked right through us, moving his lips as though chewing something soft. Finally his eyes focused and he shook his head. “I don’t need your money. There are no shops around here. No! I’m keeping the tank - I traded it fair and square.”

As we began to beg the old man raised his shotgun and fired straight at us. No warning at all... We scampered around, trying to make it out of the range of the old man’s gun as quickly as we could. Now we had another option on our already bleak list – getting the tank, getting court-marshaled, or getting shot by a crazy old guy. To make a long story short we ended up devising a whole covert operation to get the tank back. We waited until it got dark. About two hours after the sunset several guys from our outfit went to the side of the house that was opposite to where the tank was parked. Dressed as Muslim rebels they set a small fire by the well. When the old man ran out of his house and started shooting at them, they started shooting back with blanks to draw him away from the house. Meanwhile, on the other side of the house two more guys slithered their way into the tank and drove off. As it turned out the tank was chained to an apple tree – something that became obvious only after when they drove into our camp and dragging a tree.

The whole thing worked out well for us – we got the tank back, spent a great night eating kebabs and getting drunk, and at the end of the day ended up with enough apples to last us for a week. To this day I feel bad for the old guy...

Spare the rod, spoil the child

What do you do if your puppy makes a mess on your carpet? You would probably shove the puppy’s nose into the pile of doggy poop, and to reinforce the point smack the dog with a rolled up newspaper. That is a very normal, socially acceptable way of training your dog, and no one would accuse you of animal cruelty.

What do you do if your child misbehaves? Most parents would yell, threaten or, ground the child. Some would take away the child’s toys or limit the time the child is allowed to watch TV or play video games. Very few would actually resort to spanking or some other form of corporal punishment. And God forbid someone from outside of the family attempts to discipline a child – such actions could easily land the well-meaning disciplinarian in jail.

While I am against any form of physical and mental abuse, I am a firm believer that children should be punished accordingly for their misbehavior and that by not doing so we are destroying the younger generation.

In today’s American society we are conditioned to believe that everyone is special. Children grow up with a completely undeserved sense of entitlement and achievement – they get a pat on the back from their parents and teachers for the most minute and mundane things.

What is even worst is that we stopped teaching our children to respect other people. A good friend of mine is a teacher at a Pittsburgh public school, and the stories that she tells me are simply horrifying. If she fails a student, she receives threats of physical violence. On one occasion, after she sent a student to the principal’s office, he (the student) hit her in the face with a textbook. On another occasion, when she asked a student to stop talking on his cell phone in class, the student hurled his textbook at her from across the room. And she cannot do anything about it – if she were to physically discipline the kids, she’d probably end up in jail, or, even more likely, the kids would wait for her after school and beat the living hell out of her.

This past Sunday (January 6, 2008), my wife and I went to a local ice skating rink with a couple of our friends. At the rink, there was a group of 12- or 13-year-old kids who amused themselves by purposefully tripping beginner skaters, or by taking sharp turns in front of other people and throwing ice in their faces.

For the first 20 minutes of so, I tried to ignore the obnoxious kids. After a while, I got fed up and told the kids to stop. Of course, they simply ignored me. The next time one of the kids tried to trip my wife, I caught his arm and told him that if he does not stop, I’d “beat the crap out of him”. In hindsight, I probably should not have threatened him. However, no one in the rink was willing to discipline the kids – they just pretended like nothing was happening and continued to skate. The fact that our society condones such rude behavior from children, even if by simply ignoring it, absolutely positively pisses me off.

At the end of the skating session, as I was changing in the locking room, I was approached by a very large man who started screaming at me for grabbing his nephew. The man demanded that I apologize to the kid for grabbing his arm. I refused, saying that the kid should apologize to my wife first. The guy punched me in the face and when one of my friends tried to help me, the kid’s uncle threw him over a bench.

The whole altercation took maybe 5 minutes and no one tried to stop it. Everybody pretended like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The security guards did not bother showing up until after the guy who punched me in the face ran off, and the rink’s manager refused to give me the name of the kid or his parents.

When the kid’s mother showed up to pick him up, instead of disciplining her child, she screamed at us a barrage of obscenities before leading her little delinquent away. I am more than sure that he is going to get a pat on the back for being a little jerk.

I guess the point of this whole rant is quite simple – we’d all like to think that our children are special and wonderful and best in the world. We often deliberately chose to overlook their bad behavior – after all, no one wants to believe that their child is a little monster. By ignoring our kid’s bad behavior we are encouraging them to misbehave even more.

As much as it hurts me to say this, there might be some truth to the old-time axiom – “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

The cutthroat world of wedding business

Yesterday I happened to check the guestbook on my wedding photography website, www.photo-guru.net, and found a post from a professional photographer named Joe. This is his post verbadum:

Dmitry, you are a disgrace to the wedding photography community. I hope you rot in hell. Your prices are a joke and as a real pro wedding photographer I know you are not making any money from what you are doing and you are just trying to fuck up the market for the rest of us. Get the fuck off the wedding business and go get a job you can handle. Your images all blow ass.

At first I did not know how to react. If the guy had the balls to leave his contact information I would happily tell him to go screw himself. On the other hand, why should I justify my prices to some asshole who is afraid of competition. Notice that he did not begin his tirade by telling me that my "images all blow ass" The quality of my images did not bother him until he actually saw my prices.

Yes, my prices are way lower than the market average. Yes, I don’t make a ton of money with photography. On the other hand I don’t have a studio and only occasionally hire an assistant - not having those overhead cost I can afford to keep my prices low.

In the next year I am planning on expanding my business with a friend of mine - we even talked about renting a studio space. When that happens I will definitely raise my prices to cover the costs of rent and studio lighting and all that stuff. Meanwhile, people like Joe simply need to shut up and mind their own business.

Diaries, evolution and rude people

“Dear diary. Today I met a wonderful girl…”

I am well past the age where I feel the need to commit such wonderful and intimate experiences as a crush on a girl or the first kiss to paper. Moreover I am (and probably has always been) too cynical to believe in the therapeutic value of writing down my life’s greatest events. However, I do keep what could be loosely called a diary. For the past 10 years I have never left my house without a notebook and a pen. I do not harbor hidden fantasies about becoming famous at some point in my life (or even after my death), nor do I believe at any given time my diaries will be worth anything to anyone. I simply like to keep track of certain events and anecdotes. Sometimes I go months between writing anything down. Sometimes I get cases of what my mother refers to as “verbal diarrhea” and fill page after page with pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

Most of the entries refer to people I’ve met; in order to qualify for being written in my notebook the new acquaintance has to be a) an extremely interesting person, b) an extremely annoying person, c) an extremely scary person, d) and extremely stupid person, or e) all of the above.

This weekend my wife had to work on both Saturday and Sunday. Having so much free time to myself I decided to look through piles of notes and photographs that I’ve made over the years and organize them in some fashion that would be at least somewhat useful to me. While flipping through the pages of a notebook from 2003 I came across a short blurb regarding a person who qualified for becoming a subject for my wonderful penmanship by the virtue of being extremely arrogant.

As I recall (and my recollection is supported by several paragraphs in a notebook) I was sitting at the Coffee Tree coffeehouse in Squirrel Hill, peacefully reading a book by Richard Dawkins. The book was titled The Blind Watchmaker. A middle-aged gentleman moseyed over and asked if he could share a table with me. Seeing that the Coffee Tree is a rather popular place and that table space is somewhat hard to come by, I graciously nodded and went back to reading my book. For a few minutes the gentleman sipped his coffee; then he turned to me and asked me what the book was about.

I explained that the book was about the argument on the subject of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design and that the title is a pun on the famous William Paley’s analogy that if a pocket watch is found on a field, it is most reasonable to assume that someone dropped it and that it was made by a watchmaker and not by natural forces and therefore complex structures, such as living things, must be the work of God. I also explained that Richard Dawkins uses examples from biology and genetics to prove and to extrapolate on the theory of evolution.

When I uttered the word “evolution” the gentleman’s expression quickly changed from friendly curiosity to one of frustration and anger. He told me, and I quote: “People who write and publish this garbage should be publicly punished. They stand for everything that’s evil in this world. God created our planet, God created you and me. Whoever doubts that will burn in hell forever. And that includes you, young man!”

Even though I consider myself an agnostic, to quote a friend of mine “I am absolutely sure that I don’t know”. I have always tried hard to be respectful of other people’s religious views and beliefs. However, this guy’s angry outburst brought out my “rude asshole” personality and I replied with what I though was a witty repartee: “Do you think that God put fossils in the ground just to fuck with your head?”

My response was definitely rude, and if the man with whom I had this conversation ever reads my blog, I would like to apologize. However, the question of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design is still far from closed to me. I have unbounded fascination with why people chose to believe that humans were created by a higher power regardless of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? So, to answer my own question I decided to do my own survey/documentary.

I will not be able to start working on this immediately as I need to finish a couple of projects that I am currently working before I undertaking anything new. When I have more free time, I would like to procure a camcorder and interview a number of people of different faiths, upbringings and educational backgrounds. I would like to talk to priests, rabbis, ministers, scientists and just random people. At some point I will add a section to my website where everyone who wishes will be able to leave their opinions on the subject. Hey, maybe I’ll even make a movie out of it.

Meanwhile, if you have an opinion on the subject and would like to write a few lines, please feel free to do so.

The black hole that is my wife’s purse

Have you ever stuck your hand in your desk drawer and your fingers ended up in old chewing gum? Or even worse, you cut your hand on an old razor buried in the depth of the junk that had accumulated over the years?

Every woman I have ever dated had purses that reminded me of those drawers, and my wife is no exception. Whenever I ask her for a tissue or a couple of Excedrin pills, and she tells me to get it from her purse, I break out in cold sweat. Every time I stick my hand in one of her bags, I feel like I am sticking my hand into a black hole and that it might come out on the other side in a parallel universe where horrible monsters will get it.

My wife’s purse is like a tiny portable mobile home. If she were dropped in the middle of the Mojave Desert, she could probably survive for weeks on what is inside her magic purse. Do you think I’m kidding? Have you ever seen that old movie, “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids?” Well, sometimes I think that my wife has a shrinking machine hidden somewhere in our apartment, and that if we have been walking around all day she might pull out two armchairs and a dinner table from the dark recesses of her purse and set a three-course meal in the middle of a street.

In all seriousness, my wife is one of the neatest people I’ve ever met. She is not a neat freak by any means, but she always keeps everything clean and organized. Her purse, however, contains receipts going back at least two years, water bottles, medications, oatmeal bars and enough make-up and various make-up tools to either paint or build a house, or both. Many an experienced hiker/backpacker would not be able to fit as much stuff into his or her 5000 cubic inches backpack as my wife can into her tiny purse.

If she ever reveals the dark secret of her handbags to the world, we’ll be rich. Or killed by the government to keep the evil terrorists from finding out how to pack a nuclear warhead into a wallet.

Slow news day

I had not watched TV for seven years and had not missed it one bit – I got my news from the Internet, entertainment from travel, outdoor activities and books. A few months ago I got married and my wife convinced me to sell my soul and buy cable. At first, it did not bother me – I only turned on the TV to watch The Simpsons, the Discovery and the National Geographic channels. Lately, I’ve been catching myself doing something naughty – leaving TV on just to have background noise when I work.

With the TV running seemingly harmlessly on the background, I began to catch snippets of news and various useless shows that clutter the world, perpetually lowering the global IQ one point at a time.

The world is full of wonderful and horrible things that happen every day and are worth mentioning. Alas, people are not interested in these things. This morning I turned on the TV to watch the news. A horrifying story about a drunk man killing his girlfriend with a machete and maiming her two kids (the coverage took less than 30 seconds) was immediately followed by a 4-minute expose of Jamie Lynn Spears, her pregnancy, her boyfriend and whether Nickelodeon is planning on keeping her on.

I switched channels, hoping to hear about presidential candidates, world news, or at least something not involving another scandalous star. Apparently, I was asking for too much. Switching channel brought on a touching story about how Jamie’s boyfriend is planning on taking responsibility for his child and how the couple will raise the baby in Louisiana.

Yet another channel told me about that the publishing company postponed the release of Lynne Bridges’ (Britney’s mom) book about how she managed to raise two stars.

After the third fiasco I grabbed my laptop and fired up Firefox. Google search on “spears + pregnancy” returned approximately 552,000 hits, including articles from reputable news agencies such as the International Herald Tribune and MSNBC. Next, I went on Digg, and ran the same search there. 1,370 hits.

Do people have nothing else to talk or write about? Are “bad girls” such as Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohen, Britney Spears and her younger sibling so important to our culture that little else matters.

Kurt Vonnegut’s passing received only a passing mention in the news. Lucianno Pavarotti’s death went virtually unnoticed. Putin was elected the Times man of the year, and yet how does that compare in terms of news coverage with yet another scandal involving our beloved stars?

There are millions of people in this world who are much more worthy of notice than a redneck from Mississippi with little talent, or a spoiled heiress to a multi-billion-dollar fortune. Maybe we should start looking for our icons outside of Hollywood.

The wonderful world of television

Up until a few weeks ago I was happy – I had more than enough time to read, to program, to hand out with my girlfriend and waste hour after hour drinking coffee with my friends. I managed to do all these things while working full time, running a photography business and taking a class at a local community college.

When I told people about all the stuff that I used to get done in a day they often wondered if I possessed some secret time-management superpower. However, the secret was simple – I did not watch TV.

Six years ago I realized that I was paying sixty dollars a month for a bunch of cable channels that had absolutely nothing to offer. The only channels that I ever watched – the Discovery, the National Geographic, Animal Planet, the History Channel – were so addictive that sometimes I would stay up until 4AM watching some special on the Coliseum and then after two hours of sleep I’d drag myself out of bed only to call in sick and crawl back under the covers.

After missing one too many days at work because of my addiction to educational programs I finally called the cable company and cancelled my service. All of a sudden, as if by magic, I had endless hours of unoccupied time on my hands – time to read, to take weekend trips, to do all those little things that I’ve wanted to do for years but never had time because of the evil black box in my living room.

The only drawback of not having a TV was that a couple of weeks after disconnecting my cable service I could no longer participate in the conversations of the lunchroom crowd – I had no idea what kind of prank the latest “Jackass” pulled or why the phrase “You are the weakest link. Goodbye” is so annoying.

In the last couple of years television companies, in their infinite wisdom, have introduced even more reality shows, thus making me a pariah among my co-workers. After all, how can you participate in a conversation if you don’t know that “this guy with long hair, you know which one I’m talking about, the one from the American Idol” really sucked last night? Or that someone ate a boxful of roaches to win fifty thousand dollars?

I kept trying to convince myself that (and I successfully did so for 6 years) that I did not need television – I got all of my news from the Internet and thankfully Barnes and Noble has not ran out of books yet – I was going to be perfectly fine without cable TV.

My downfall came from a very unexpected direction. About two months ago my Verizon DSL started to randomly drop my internet connection. At first the problem was simply a small annoyance until one fine morning I was working from home and when the connection suddenly disappeared I ended up losing over 2000 lines of code. Moreover, every time the connection dropped it would take longer and longer to come back. On one memorable occasion I had to live without internet for 2 days. My calls to Verizon tech support did not seem to make any difference – I called 5 times, probably spent a total of 3 hours on hold and did not get anywhere – the problem simply persisted.

Finally I got fed up, cancelled my Verizon phone and DSL services and signed up with Comcast. The sales lady was very helpful in telling me that I could save money by getting basic cable service with my internet services – it would be cheaper to combine the two than to get a stand-alone cable internet.

I made the mistake of giving in…

At first having a functioning TV in my house did not make much difference in my life – driven by the inertia of my television-free years I only occasionally watched “The Simpsons” or “The Family Guy.” That is until my girlfriend became addicted to the “American Idol”…

… And guess what – in the last couple of weeks I only read before I go to bed, I only program at work and I no longer go for walks in the evenings. On the bright side, I know who Simon Cowell is and why you should not paint a love message on the wall with a blood-colored paint like the guy from “Beauty and the Geek.”

All and all, I’m having fun – I come home, grab a plate of food and veg out in front of my TV for hours of wholesome entertainment. Who needs books anyway?