First thing I did was rig up the closest thing I could afford to a SCANNER. I have this aged Sony handycam -- the very first model -- which will no longer pull tape through it. However, it will still make a video signal, which I can feed into my Mac's butt through a wire.
My Mac's butt is in much better shape than my watchdog's nose. MY nose, MY butt... AGH! You DON'T wanna hear about it.
Believe me, I am extremely and painfully aware of the difference between a video camera and a scanner, and a dog's lupus-ravaged snout spewing 3 very fine streams of blood a yard out everywhere he looks. Scanning involves finer resolution. However, I figured, if I did it at full tweak the camera would MAYBE be better than NOTHING AT ALL (or worse, entrusting the art to rich depressed youths, which almost always backfires). I used to be an animator of sorts and I know how to make a copy stand. And so I did. I got me them scoop floods and that sunlight-color-temperature-blue bulbs (I'm letting sunlight do part of the job) and them cords and that glass and... well when I got to actually "scanning" I realized NO, to do this RIGHT I would also need the GOL PANGED POLARIZING FILTERS on the camera AND the lights AND the glass, AND the lights need to be adjustable and this upside-down-strung tripod is not the BEST mount and you cain't hardly focus through this viewfinder and with this rinky little MACRO piece of shit handle on the lens (but at least it's not one of the NEW AUTO-FOCUS ONLY kinds!!!)... and I've already spent almost $50 (!!!!) on this rinkly dink Rube Goldberg SubGenius-rigged contraption, AND to boot, really, at its very best, with the lights cranked and the photos not crinkling and the focus perfect and the color balanced, the best you're gonna get is 125 fuckin' lines.
So for tiny little website snapshots of the latest naked SubGenius event, I guess it'll do, although I found that one can literally FIDDLE with these images trying to clean 'em up, for HOURS. I will admit that only last week I studied the most basic computer graphics elements, like levels and color balances and resolutions and blurring and sharpening and Intellihance (actually that's a piece of shit) and so on... so when I saw how crappy my scans looked at BEST, I got to monkeying with them, and at this stage I'm probably overdoing it. By gobbs, it's just like with bad audio tapes and an equalizer -- if you tweak them with UNERRING JUDGEMENT and SUPERHUMAN SENSITIVITY, you can make 'em to where they almost sound half decent, or are at least usable, or at last resort, just turn the fucked-uppedness into an EFFECT and make it seem deliberate (the secret of Modern Art, revealed here).
Being a proper SubGenius, the first thing I worked on as an exercise was a picture of myself at age 3 or so, in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. It's my favorite picture of me because the child looks so innocent and full of fun, so totally, blissfully unaware of the twists of fate that will yank him to through the gauntlets of NHGH and "BOB" only to dump him on this newsgroup.
I attach stangievamp.GIF, which is the token first doktored one (using Photoshop instead of GOO, like a MAN, I'll have you know!), but I also offer stangie3.GIF, for those of you who have gotten tired of fucking up Dobbsheads and OldStangScams. I want to combine the two, give the child long graying hair and a cigaret (even though I am still a nonsmoking smoker) and make him look really seedy and degenerate. Maybe stick an upside down pipe in there.
I have not yet made my "Official Pipe Cut-Out Layer File" yet! I know you guys ALL have one. Probably several. Maybe tonight when I attempt to breathe life into the first crude version of the Monster.
*****
I have 4 boxes on the Layout Desk over there. They are all marked, "SACRED SUBG SNAPSHOTS" although some of them are color artwork too garish for the old B&W Fist mags. It's a history of the Church old-timer Hierarchiite weirdos in kodachrome. In "spare" moments -- that is, times when I'm too out of it to do anything more complex -- I've been sorting through those searching really FUNNY or else truly inexplicable images. I have vowed that as I dig up good ones I will "scan" and post them.
With this poor man's scanner (handycam), though, I pretty much HAVE to fuck with them and FX 'em up to justify their use.
We have a devival coming up in Atlanta on the 9th-10th, a fairly big production at a bar and strip joint, with me, Dr. Legume and Rev. Susie the Floozie headlining. I found some photos from the last devival in Atlanta (Dragon Con I guess) of Susie in action, plus one of Mighty Joe Legume HOLDING SUSIE AND ME UP OFF THE GROUND IN HIS ARMS -- LegSuStangGlo.GIF (sorry about the names, ye old DOS folks, but... I'm sorry.).
The lens flare of lights coming from our crotches, while jejune and distracting, is there for a reason. The photo in its original form was a clear "squirrel shot" of Susie... "If you can read lips you might get something out of it," she commented. Also, although I did not actually sport a huge boner at the time, it LOOKED like I did. In the interest of public health and decorum, I simply science-fictioned 'em.
I had several shots of Susie on stage that were GREAT PHOTOS but looked pretty drab when scanned, even after tweakery. Only thing left to do at that point... start seeing what all those plug-in buttons and knobs do... set everything on fire... I had a lot of fun doing that. I have been wanting to push those knobs and buttons (without it being mere unjustifiable non-"work") for a LONG TIME.
I spread this stuff around the X-Day Drill and UpComing Devivals pages on SubSITE.
If I had time, I would go back and add glowing eyes and pointy ears and strange clouds to every photo of real SubGenii on SubSITE. I can hardly look at a graphic without wanting to fiddle with it now. It's a disease. And I still haven't done the chapters on COMPOSITING yet!!
Final pic is a snapshot of one of the high points of my life, being baptized by Jesus and Dr. Legume in the pool of menstrual blood and afterbirth, at the X-Day Drill 96, surrounded by naked frollicing famous SubGenius menstruating girls and just-castrated boys. I believe that alt.binaries.slack's own Steve Slack is visible with his hairy disgusting chest. He was not one of the Castrati.
Original file name: Scanner Blues
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