While Seated, Date Descending [007]

Michael David Murphy
While Seated
Published in
6 min readApr 26, 2016

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20160419_IMG_5811.JPG — Screenshot from Herzog’s “Land of Silence & Darkness
20160426 — I haven’t seen Hamilton, but am convinced this is Peggy from “The Schuyler Sisters” [Telegram screenshot]
20160426_IMG_5768.JPG — HAIR MAKEUP CHANGING, G15

20160426 — The primary reason to keep rolling here is because ‘you make the things that you want to see in the world’, right? Isn’t that how it’s done?

What are you not seeing in this (internet) world that you want to see?

Is your perspective accurately represented by the tools you’ve chosen or has your perspective and the tools you use to reflect yourself been chosen for you?

Why does everything on fill-in-your-timeline-newsface-gram look the same?

When and if you the find answers; make them breathe.

20160426 — From a clip of the initial version of Fitzcarraldo that was scrapped, with Jason Robards and Mick Jagger, embedded inside “My Best Fiend” [screenshot]
20160426 — Gam gamification?

20160426 — Really enjoyed this morning’s “Is the Web Dead?” episode of Track Changes, especially this leap in discussing how the increasing corporat-ification of the early Web has led to:

“this is the equivalent of ‘all the little coffee shops in that charming town are gone?’ And there’s like two Starbucks and a Dunkin’ Donuts.”

20160425 — These domains are already taken:

ClintonWarren.com
ClintonWarren.us
ClintonWarren2016.com
HillaryAndElizabeth.com

This domain is not: hillandelizabeth.com

20160424 — How many times in the last month have you scrolled back in your Facebook posts in a meaningful way? Did you find what you were looking for; were you surprised?

If you haven’t scrolled back, do you have a reason why your posts are on there, other than the fact that it’s easy, and that’s where the audience is? Why not delete them? Why post them to begin with?

If you’re not keeping track of yourself, why would you want someone else to do it for you, in their way, with their ads?

20160424 — I have the century, country, and artist wrong, but something about this background woman on C-Span seemed painterly familiar. [copy/paste]

If there’s an art to blogging, what would the art of blogging look like?

20160423_IMG_5705_MDM_6s.JPG — $9 Egg Avocado Salad from Farm to Ladle not 1/2 as good as $1.50 Egg Salad at Augusta National
20160423Golf culture freaked out about four guys (three of them millionaires) vacationing in the Bahamas and compulsively Snapchatting. Easy to criticize (it’s golf, they’re young, privileged and it’s Snapchat) but their Snaps were the most exuberant thing I’ve seen in such a staid sport for quite awhile (Bubba Watson’s efforts don’t count) and I expect someone will say the joy these bros expressed taught them how to love the sport (again). More than anything, their Snapchats reminded me of the Super 8 movies my dad took with his buddies while deployed in Vietnam — blowing off steam enjoying R&R while on leave from a super stressful situation. Tough to compare playing on the PGA Tour with fighting in Vietnam, but there you go. [screenshot of Kaufman, Thomas & Spieth]
20160423I’m trying to be less cynical about joy. [screenshot of unattributed photo from back-to-back hole-in-ones during Par-3 contest at The Masters; Fowler, Spieth & Thomas]

Podcast Mispronounciations — I’ve heard “codifying” (in a music discussion about Prince — CODE-if-eyeing) and “debauchery” (in an interview with Dan Auerbach — de-BOCK-ery) mispronounced in the last 24hrs. Codify was mispronounced five separate times.

20160422Vic Berger took this amazing photo of his hand and Ted Cruz.
20160421 — One of the oddest photographs I’ve seen in a long while. Accompanied the ESPN/Wright Thompson piece —the photo’s linked.
20160421 — And now the contextless livestream of media and fans arriving and traffic barricades going up outside Paisley Park.

20160421 — If you read the Erykah Badu profile in the new New Yorker and wondered if it had positively influenced how many people were currently listening to her music, the answer is…. nope. [copy/paste]

20160421 — Did you know that in 1996, when Phife-Dawg said “You frontin hard, when you softer than the Berenstain Bears” he pronounced it “Buren Steen”, further fanning the flames of the fact that we (you, me and everyone else!) somehow merged into an alternate universe where the Berenstein Bears of our youth have been switched to Berenstain Bears, and no one knows for sure when it happened or why. [Massive hat-tip on the Tribe call to @losethemittens]
http://missingthe90s.com/post/127697480058/a-popular-kids-book-series-known-to-most-of-the
20160420 — Words in the right sequence at the right time is part of what makes Twitter great.
20160420 — This is unbelievable. College kids re-writing Hamilton to be about Jeb Bush. #thekidsarealright [screenshot]

20160419 — For better or worse, there’s always been a heavy puritanical strain in the photography community:

  • “I only take instagram photos with my phone”
  • “I don’t post-process at all — everything’s ‘in-camera’”
  • “I don’t crop images, every photo is full-frame”

…and on and on…

If you’re beginning to think about screenshots as a kind of photography (I am, and I’m late to this) you could apply that same “in-camera” or photo-purity to yer screenshot-taking efforts.

I love the idea of the gamification of screenshots (like the Headless Caddy from last update) and especially this new notification to my unphotographable instagram account, during the beginning of a Herzog film dealing with blindness.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

20160417_IMG_5572 — Screenshot of notification for Unphotographable instagram overlayed (in realtime) over screengrab of subtitle from Herzog’s Land of Silence and Darkness
20160419 — #tropdrop at work
20160419 — [copy/paste from persistent existential error in gmail/gchat status area]
20160419_IMG_5633_MDM_6s.JPG— Musical rear-end.
20160418 — WHAT DO YOU THINK GARY MEANT BY THAT?

20160418 — We’re fortunate to live in a part of Atlanta not directly under flight plans into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson, the world’s busiest airport, but in the last two days I’ve had two experiences that made me realize the kind of shadow cast by a passing plane might have some actual correlation with predator/fight-or-flight (pun NOT intended) response in the brain.

Either that, or I’ve been drinking too much coffee.

Just a second ago, the sun was quickly blotted out by some high-flying plane, and I noticed my brain did a quick shudder — not enough to make me duck or tense-up, but there was a noticeable reaction. And the same thing happened yesterday on the front porch with the kids. We immediately looked skyward to see what was up.

20160418_IMG_5617.PNG
20160418 — The best bit of media hacking I’ve seen in a very long time; the decision of filmmaker Nate Parker to give his Sundance-winning film chronicling Nat Turner’s life the same title as D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”. And such a fantastic quote, above. Including trailer below to save you a click. [wiki screengrab]
20160417_IMG_5591_MDM_6s.JPG — When you unthinkingly velcro your golf glove to your steering wheel but you’re not in a golf cart.
20160417_IMG_5594.PNG — From the Field of Vision short about #blacklivesmatter at University of Missouri last year.
20160416–[copy/paste from crossfade, as aired]

20160416 — Came across the screen-grab above while making a supercut of Kobe’s last game. I’ve seen these moments before, where crossfades from telecasts offer something unique and often scary, like this, where Flea’s ear merges with Kobe’s nose into something not wholly human.

I tuned-in to the Kobeshow last week, just to see the hub-bub, and quickly clicked over to Steph Curry and the Warriors after Kobe started the game 0–5 from the floor, further cementing my 20-year long impression that Bryant was good because he was a ball-hog, and if you shoot enough, you’ll eventually make enough baskets to leave an impression.

He always seemed quintessentially Los Angeles to me; all surface and soullessness. The beauty in his style of play was cloned-stamped from Jordan, and as such, I never really felt I knew who Kobe was. Maybe Kobe felt the same way. His stardom felt so propped-up and manufactured, like a cold soundstage with underwhelming craft services.

20160423_IMG_5702.PNG — Yeah, not date descending, but there you go.

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Michael David Murphy
While Seated

Photographer, Writer, Non-Profiteer.