Can You Please Yourself?

This is what you get from a Holga shot from the hip and developed and scanned at home.  It is kind of fun, but is it. . . worth it?

I almost asked, is it. . .  "art"?

The real question is whether it is interesting or entertaining.  

And of course, each of you knows the answer to that.  

But, would you like it better if I posted without pictures?  Or music?  Or other silliness?  Hell, Vanity Fair couldn't stay in business that way, and they only post once a month.  

I heard a government official on the evening news, I don't remember who, say they wanted someone to lead [some agency] who had "the highest moral standards," and I wondered what he meant.  What are the highest moral standards and where in the universe are they located?  

Of course, you can't find such a thing anywhere but inside your own noggin and in group settings where people agree with you.  It is a social construct.  Obviously.  

Only it doesn't seem obvious to people, does it?  What that fellow meant was someone who agrees with his concept of behavior.  Nothing more.  And yet, I'm sure by his own standards he, too, is guilty of "moral turpitude." 

How do I know that?  Oh. . . I've made a life's study of it.  Trust me.  I'm not like the others. . . I'm your friend.  

And you see, Trump isn't guilty of "moral turpitude" because he is free of moral concepts, just as is Putin and Xi and the Pope.  Moral concepts are a tools they use to gather power.  Their minds are free of moral boundaries.  

It takes a special person to live without a moral compass.  We used to call them maniacs.  

But what I have found in my exhaustive studies of the matter is that YOU live unconsciously driven by a moral paradigm you cannot truly identify, maybe something vague like "see no evil, speak none, see none."  You know. . . the usual childhood criterion.  

"Stop it!  Don't hit your sister!  Be nice or you won't have supper."

We live our lives by contradictions like, "Murder is a sin. . . unless it is necessary."  

Explain to me the morality of war.  Oh, you are against war.  You can turn the other cheek?  How many times?  

We live in uncertain times.  Ethics are situational.  

I know, I know, that is a little bait and switch.  Morality and ethics are not the same thing.  And perhaps I've intertwined the two to my own discredit.  

Whatever.  They are closely aligned.  I'm not going to delete and rewrite this post now.  

I should, though.  I should write about the big mystery--is what is in the box?  Hand Rolled?   I could have riffed on that instead.  

There are more Holga pictures.  More Bike Week, too.  But I keep asking myself the question--are they interesting or entertaining?  

It is like asking "is it moral."  We live by standards most often that we have trouble articulating.  "Art for art's sake," is about as vague and close as I can get.  

Let's listen to some music.  Some of you may like it, some of you might not.  It goes on and on and on. . . .  But as Rick Nelson said, "you can't please everyone so you might as well please yourself." 

I'm pretty sure you won't.