Stress in the city

 

In Vancouver we bought an expensive herbal tea. It tasted like rotten grass but was supposed to have a calming effect. After five cups of this I realized it had no effects whatsoever. Thinking about the price I even got a bit upset.

The buffaloes

Suddenly I heard Nina shout: "Hey, where have you been?" I had no idea. I was walking around with a heavy buffalo head, not really sure where to put it.

Green orbs

I took three exposures of this house, all within a couple of minutes. The exposure time varied from 2-8 seconds. I didn't see anything strange, but later I realized that all the exposures had these green orbs over the house, at the exact same spot. 

Of course, I could have made those orbs in Photoshop. It wouldn't be difficult. But the thing is I didn't, so I'm a bit puzzled. You can click on the image and see for yourself.

Apparently the UFO sightings are numerous in Alaska. The theory goes that aliens are interested in gold, which again merge with the conspiracy revolving around the US government and a sudden devaluation of the dollar. You may wonder why the American currency should be under attack from outer space. Is it a more plausible explanation than budgets out of balance?

However, we shouldn't be so occupied with intelligent life in space. We should rather look for intelligent life on earth. It may not exist.

A global view on architecture

I've always felt that Nome is one of those places on the edge of the world. It's just about to tip over. Some of the houses have tipped in their own ways, standing on stilts that have sunk down in the summer melt.

But new houses are also being built, and for some reason these facade-like boxes seemed to be in fashion.

 

I mentioned this to a guy from the lower 48. We were sitting in Polar Bar and there wasn't really much to talk about. There's a lot of strange houses here in Nome, I claimed. He'd probably done some traveling because he had this theory that houses got stranger the further north you came. What's more, you could see the same tendency south in the southern hemisphere – meaning that all houses, and architecture in general, got weirder towards the poles. I asked if it would mean that architecture was at its best at equator. I doubt it, he said.

Miniature thinking

The last decades we've seen several artists building meticulous models of houses and cities, as a twisted representation of reality. What is less talked about is the somewhat vague notion of the opposite.

The drunk woman in Nome

 

A drunk native came up and asked if I was taking pictures. She asked if I wanted to photograph her, but being drunk she had some problems standing still under the long exposures. I was getting frustrated because I knew the pictures would be good if she only could stop moving. Then it turned out she thought I was making a movie. We got that sorted out, but suddenly she lost interest and took off.