Mitchell Surprenant

Julie and I invested in a Canon Rebel XT recently. I love it. Every little thing it does is magic. One of my first purchases regarding the camera was (of course) clear filters to protect the lenses. I was going to go with just the straight-up clear filters, but the guy at Ritz Photo was convincing enough to sell me on UV filters, “like sunglasses for your camera,” was his pitch.

I figured what the heck, right? It’s only a few dollars more and maybe I’ll get some use out of them some really sunny day. I put them on the lenses and didn’t think about them.

That was until about 2 weeks ago. I wanted to shoot at 100 ISO outside, because it’s just too much fun to see my photos with almost no noise in them. I affixed the UV lens and went out to shoot in the generally sunny day. In affecting how much light entered the camera, the UV lens has to be turned, so I did so, and for comparison, I took one at the least-powerful setting. Check out the result, though. These photos were both shot at the same ISO, same f-stop, same shutter speed:

Low filter versus high filter:

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Here’s your change, sir. Have a wonderful day.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Uh… sure,” I replied, knowing that it probably wouldn’t end well.

“Are you a believer?

“In what?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Well, I believe he existed, but that’s as far as I feel like going at work. Maybe catch me after work.”

I get asked questions like that all the time. Growing up, my answer to the question of “Are you a believer?” would be, “Yes. Jesus Christ is my Lord and personal savior.”

Which is all well and nice. I really enjoy my parents’ church, and the pastor and his wife & kids are probably the strongest (and coolest) people in their faith that I know, next to my friend Eric.

But I’ve grown out of the church as of late, mainly because my chosen place of worship was 200 miles away when I went away to school. That’s a terrible excuse, and I know it’s a terrible excuse, but it’s the truth. I’ve grown accustomed to the secular society.

It’s fun, and I don’t live in fear of the Judeo-Christian God that most of the people in this town seem to know.

So, what, are you an Atheist?

Pardon the expression, but hell no. I’m what you’d call an Agnostic. There’s nothing that any religious person can present to me that could prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their God exists. Similarly, there is nothing an Atheist could present to me that could prove beyond a similar doubt that a god exists.

In the words of Bill Maher, I don’t know! I don’ t know if there is or isn’t a god. I don’t know if there is a heaven or a hell, and I don’t know what happens when we die. Neither do you.

So, I use the generally moral teachings instilled in me by my parents to live my life. Even though I’m not a believer of the Judeo-Christian God, I’m not a murderer or even a rapist. I’m actually a moral human being.

Which reminds me of another point. The ultra right-wing co-worker of mine tried to convince me once that irreligious people cannot be moral. At all. Morals, he believes, must come from a fear or belief in a higher power. What’s your take?

You like my drawing? I dig it. © Mitch Surprenant 2009.

I can’t listen for too long to Glenn Beck, because the last time I tried, he had some words on the chalkboard with arrows between them, then decided to erase whatever word was at the top and replace it with “OBAMA.” Yeah, because political concepts are interchangable. Clearly SOCIALIAM = FASCISM = COMMUNISM = MARXISM.

But I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about, among other things the fact that the United Nations assesses the USA the most money in dues. This coworker brought up an interesting point about Glenn Beck. Beck closes his show (apparently?) with a phrase similar to “every day, I find myself becoming more libertarian.”

Heck it’s even in this transcript on Beck’s own website where he talks with Bob Barr:

[Beck:] Bob, I appreciate you joining me, sir. I’m kind of in a quandary here. I don’t know exactly what to do and I find myself becoming more and more libertarian every day because I just don’t see us solving any of our problems unless we solve our problems here at home first, which is spending out of control, you know, getting the dollar back on track and then also going for our own energy.

So why is good for the left? Because the libertarians are already an established third party. Beck himself and many will no doubt vote for Republican candidates in the 2010 elections, but a good number of his listeners and viewers are going to look in to the libertarian movement, which may very well appeal to them. They sure as hell won’t vote Democrat (the party of on-demand abortions and forced sodomy), so the libertarian party will take from where these people would normally vote — that is, the Republican party.

I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as a complete vote splitting situation, but I think it’s going to hurt Republicans’ chances of winning as many seats as they want to in the midterms.
GO GLENN!

Go ahead, keep your kids home from Obama’s speech today. Clearly, you’ll be sending a message to, uh… the school district.

You sent your political message, though. You made your point.

But you’d better start watching your kids’ internet usage. Because all the kids with regular (read: normal) parents are going to be talking about how cool it was to see the president tell them to stay in school. Your kids will probably just watch it later on YouTube, or MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or hell, lets still make believe that people go to DailyMotion.

But you made your point. You kept your kids from that socialist, fascist Obama while they were in school, right? You made a difference, didn’t you?

There’s probably a good chance you’re going to want to keep the TV off for a few days, too. Even your beloved Fox News will be covering the faux outrage and replaying the damning video evidence.

Your kids are probably going to be teenagers at some point. Your kids will probably rebel against you, and remember that you made them stay home during some speech that, had you not said anything, probably would have been forgotten in less than a year. Heck, they may even start supporting *gasp* LIBERAL and PROGRESSIVE causes.

But you made your political point. You kept your kids from being indoctrinated with those socialist agendas such as, “Stay in school,” “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” and that terrible, awful socialist doctrine, “create the next Google, or eBay.”

You made this out to be a bigger issue than ever. Your children are going to see this message whether you like it or not.

I’ve been a Chicago (and South Suburbs) kid since the better half of 1993. Moving to Virginia was a big culture shock. There were different laws, different people, different companies and different convictions.

Every once in a while, I get a shot in the arm that I’m not in Chicago, and that I’m south of the Mason-Dixon line.

But I’ve lived in Lynchburg (the town that Jerry Falwell built) for almost 3 months now. It’s starting to grow on me that this is where I live now– this is where my life is going to happen.

I’ve noticed a significant number of vanity plates in the Lynchburg area. I’ve tried to find out why they are so much more common than in Chicago. Until I find a satisfactory answer, I will post some of the best ones here.

But clearly it can’t happen too quickly. I’ve been lazy as of late in following up on any state department application or test after my initial interest in March. Damnit, I will eventually.

That said, a customer reminded me of a strong point of mine today– my voice. Every once in a while, when I meet a new customer at Walgreens, they’ll comment on how professional my voice sounds, or how I should go in to broadcasting. Believe me, if it were that easy, I would do it. Subsequently, if there are any radio executives or people in “the biz” with some insider knowledge, please, let me know.

I wonder if the state department has any jobs for broadcast journalism majors with booming voices…

Well, here it is. It’s the brand new and improved mitchsurp.com. There are considerably fewer photos, but I do expect that to change soon.

The overhaul was long overdue, mainly because of my resume. If there was a specific feature you really liked on my old site, I can put it back up really quickly– you just have to let me know.

In the meantime, why don’t you check out one of the already-established websites that I host? The links are on the right, and I know some of them are interesting, but most are in a constant state of construction.

Anyway, I promise more blog posts and thoughts as this rolls out… I just wanted to get away from the empty page and see if this posted to both Facebook and Twitter.

Love you all lots!

-Mitch