Lovecraft Country

My buddy, MooSe swooped me up yesterday to go to the 1130 Club, so that I could score some Grey Market Marijuana like the days before Trump took office. Trump had nothing to do with the commercialization of marijuana and the death of affordable, quality medicine, replacing it with a recreational price that reflects back to the days before Prop215 which is the reality of Prop64 as predicted by the HBO Show Weeds. Legal Marijuana in the United States currently looks a lot like the era of American History depicted in Lovecraft Country.  This is especially heinous considering how the war on drugs and marijuana in particular was used for the last fourth years to unfairly target, prosecute, convict and incarcerate Black and other minorities in this country. Last night, the clients and the business owners were from an incredibly diverse sociology demographic and that just made this progressive anthropologist feel all warm and fuzzy.

NBC News Marijuana Article
Screenshot

Lovecraft Country is set in 1950’s America, at the height of the Jim Crow Era.  That’s essentially the height of the segregation Era just before the Civil Rights protests began in earnest.  The all Black ensemble cast does an amazing job of introducing the stark realities of the more than 100 years of institution racism and bias that was a direct result of the concept of White Man’s manifest destiny, a concept embraced by White America after the Civil War Ended.  The transcontinental railroad, built on the backs of less desirable, hard working minorities like the Chinese and Black Americans who were frequency murdered by the railroads because paying survivor benefits was significantly less than the actual wages they were owed. Much like most of the horrendous history from that period is romanticized and the harsh realities of the horrible and horrendous and unspeakable acts that were committed white washed out by Hollywood and Manifest Destiny like Tom Sawyer explaining how fun painting a picket fence could be.

Lovecraft was born at the literal height of the White Man’s Manifest Destiny as eugenics began to become the pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-science that took the world by storm and it fueled the racial animosity, hatred and bigotry that the newly emerging technology known as photography was able to capture all of violence, mayhem and murder in stunning, high contrast Black and White images that will often haunt the viewer for the rest of their lives. He was a White Supremist and I highly suspect he knew of and would have been openly supportive of Adolph Hitler although he died before the actual war of aggression started in Europe.

Lovecraft Country does an excellent job of recreating some of the more disturbing realities of why the White House walls are white and the fact that most modern travel guides owe their existence to a Black travel guide designed to keep Black people safe when travelling through White America during segregation where many states lacked actual laws that made it a crime to rape a black woman or lunch a black man. Understanding this harsh reality of life for Black Americans suddenly makes the America that Marty McFly flirted with incest was truly jaded by White Privilege because 1955 was completely and totally the the same era depicted in this show.

I was hooked from the moment we are introduced to the protagonist, Tic, short for Atticus. He’s a young Black man returning home from the Army and he’s a nerd reading science fiction. Hello, I’m a nerd and love science fiction.  The dialog is raw and real and honest from the start of the film and if you’re white, it hurts just a little bit each time the show uses the harsh, stark realities of segregation like a blade of grass to inflict shallow, paper cut like slices in the scab of nationalism.    As the white washed history we were taught in high school suddenly melts away, drenching those aforementioned cuts with a feeling similar to lemon juice.

Balloon Boy Revisited

Flash back to October 15, 2009 President Barack Obama had been in office roughly 9 months and the economy was on full recession. Terrifyingly, then and now, Glenn Beck had the best-selling book! While the Pixar animated hit movie Up had already introduced the concept of using helium balloons to travel by air in a manner similar to how Dorothy used the tornado to lift a house with her in it and travel over the rainbow to Oz. Just before lunch the large Network News preempted regular programming and CNN switched it’s focus to show a silver disc shaped balloon flying over Colorado that was allegedly carrying a six year old boy called Falcon Heene. His father, Richard Heene had designed the balloon as a real-life science experiment that somehow gone wrong while his son was playing inside. A few hours later, it was discovered that Falcon was actually hiding in a box in the attic and the News stories changed to make it appear that Richard and Mayume Heene had been guilty of a pre-planned hoax in a vain attempt at internet fame in order to score a television deal. This story would go down in history as the Balloon Boy Hoax.

As much as this pains me to do, I must use a quote from the current POTUS, Number 45 as Jussie Smullet refers to him and claim this was Fake News picked up and spread like wildfire across the country and ultimately around the world. The original story of the hoax was soon fueled by the stories about Richard Heene and Miyume Heene accepting a plea deal and pleading guilty in court. Except many people are completely unaware of what transpired behind the scenes that elicited the acceptance of those Plea agreements and if they were they might question the validity of those agreements and admissions of guilt. Miyume Keene was born in Japan and is here on a Legal Resident Visa and they threatening to revoke her Visa removing her ability to remain in this country legally and then deport her back to her native country of Japan. This would happen, of course, without her husband and kids leaving them here in America without their mother while she would remain in Japan without her kids. Under those conditions it would be highly unlikely she would ever be issued a visa to re-enter this country and therefore could never visit her kids or husband. Richard Keene would be forced to make regular trips to Japan to visit his wife with his kids so they could visit their mother. Under these conditions almost anyone would suck up their pride, plead guilty and accept whatever punitive consequences they were given to ensure that their wife and baby mama remained in this country and close to their kids.

The news media seized on the words of a precocious and nervous child in an interview to turn on the family and devour them like wolves. The State Agency created to look after the best interest of the children and protect them from abusive and neglectful parents suddenly became the strong-arm of the Sheriff’s department looking to create unwilling hostile witnesses out of the children by interviewing them the same way they do abused and exploited children using seemingly innocuous questions, asking them to draw pictures and remember situations with the goal of getting testimony that would indicate the entire situation was a hoax and pre-planned. Except that the intervie s didn’t prove that, instead they proved the exact opposite that the Heene’s had every reason to possibly believe that Falcon was in the balloon and that they had no way of knowing he had actually gone to hide in the attic in fear because his father had scolded him previously for playing in and too close to the balloon as it was being filled with helium. Those investigating the incident also abused the civil rights of both parents as well as the physical health of Richard Keene. Richard Keene had gone almost 52 hours without real sleep when he was as subjected to long and intense interrogation. During that interrogation he checked his blood sugar and got a result that was well above 400 when normal should be around 100. Soon after checking his blood sugar he was given a polygraph. Meanwhile, Miyume who speaks English as a second language and should have been given an interpreter was interviewed without an interpreter and often asked if she understood what words meant and although she replied “Yes,” no further questions were asked to ensure that she truly understood what was being asked. In th cases of all of the interviews, the sworn affidavits of the officers conducting the interviews attested to statements that were sometimes the exact opposite of what was said by the person being interviewed or just gross misinterpretation of what was actually said. But you don’t have to believe me, let Richard Heene tell you in his own words.

I chose to write this blog because of the current situation where we are discussing police brutality and racism because we also need to address the corruption and horrible investigations like this one in particular. We need to address the entire plea agreement system that often uses what amounts to blackmail to force a defendant to waive their right to a jury trial and plea guilty to what amounts to lesser charges in order to save others from severe harm by the actions of the police, prosecutors and government. The saddest part is even if new evidence completely exonerates someone who has plead guilty to lesser charges under most conditions it will.javr absolutely little to no effect on those guilty pleas other than to potentially free them from incarceration a little sooner. The entire system from the police department on up needs to be audited and reforms made so that the District Attorney’s office doesn’t pay the salaries for the public defenders and that those same public defenders don’t share offices or any resources with the DA. What are your thoughts on the Balloon Boy or any of the randomness that are in this blog? Here is a news story with an update on the Keene family from a year or so ago.

And then here’s the Heene Boyz with a heavy metal response with their views or side on the entire situation which just left me in awe and happiness. The song, Balloon Boy No Hoax from the album titled Finger It Out. Awesome Sauce.

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses
Box Top and Bottom View

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses
Box Long Side Views

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses
Box Short Side Views

The views of all six sides of the Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses box that shipped from Amazon. Inside the box is a folded nylon pouch with a Velcro closure and an instruction manual. Next to the Unbox pouch is the filter attached to a Smartphone Clip.

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lenses

Finally the unfolded pouch contains four different close-up filters and literature explaining the design and their use.

Vivitar Close-Up Macro Lens Kit

So, these filters although they are called Lenses on the packaging not only magnify slightly, they allow for you to hold the camera closer and focus closer then otherwise would be possible.

Images Using
Vivitar Close-Up Lense +10

The top images were taken first with and then without the filter on the main camera module of the Motorola G5 Plus while it was sitting on top of a small box above the table and black thread that came with the circular polarizer. Notice there isn’t a lot of difference in the magnification because this isn’t the main function of the filter. Rather it’s function is simply to allow for the camera to obtain a sharp focus closer to the object then would be possible without using the filter. The second set of images where I held the camera as close to the table and thread as possible while still obtaining the same crisp, sharp focus. It’s where you begin to see the true magic that can be achieved with this particular filter and the smartphone camera.

Clip-On Lens Filters

I hear all the time how iPhone (smartphones) have become as good or even surpassed digital cameras and therefore there isn’t a reason to buy point-and-shoot or even high end SLR Cameras anymore. Apple had a famous director record a snowball fight using the current model of Apple’s Smartphone to show what can be done in the hands of skilled professionals who used a bunch of other supporting technology to get the results necessary to produce the final edit. What isn’t shown in the video or the making of videos is exactly how much other technology and tools were necessary to achieve the final results. That’s not documented or even discussed because it’s a lot like those famous 11 herbs and spices KFC is always talking about. That’s what will ultimately prevent you from every achieving those results using the same actors, scripts, sets and props and smartphone.

Smartphone Clip-On
Circular Polarizer Lens

In this package is a circular polarizer, a lens cap and a special clip that sort of resembles a short, wide clothes pin with an odd shaped hole in the middle. This is designed to be clipped with the smartphone camera centered in the oddly shaped cutout where it will function like the same filter installed on a SLR or Single Lense Reflex Camera. This is often referred to as a professional camera because it is what the majority of professional and serious hobby users tend to use and they are based on similar cameras from the film era by the very same manufacturers.

Clip-On Smartphone
Circular Polarizing Filter

Essentially what this does is cuts down on and removed glare and lens flare by blocking light that is coming in and a different angle and by turning the filter you can change the anlge of the light that is being blocked. I will endeavor to take some pictures using the filter and post the results here. I have had other filters and lenses in the past and there was always a trade-off due to size, but now that the IPhone has a wider angle lense as default, the filters with 37mm widths have dropped in price and there are now clips large enough to accommodate them.

Vivitar
Close-Up Macro Lenses

I have ordered a four filter set of Vivitar 37mm Close-Up filters with a +1, +2, +4, and a +10. The filters are threaded on both sides so they can be screwed on a lens / case / clip and then another filter can be screwed in to it. This would allow someone to stack all four filters together for an incredibly magnified effect. They can also be used with a filter stepping ring do that they can be attached to a SLR lens. I need to order a 37mm to 40.5 step-up ring so that I can attach the filters to the Nikon 1 J1 30-110mm Zoom Lens which is the only lens I have at the moment. Ultimately I’m assembling many of the small, inexpensive tools that can be acquired from Amazon and eBay to improve and enhance your smartphone and digital camera images.

Coolpix B500

The Nikon Coolpix B500 is an entry level point and shoot super zoom camera. This is essentially a camera that has a 40x Zoom and a 16 Megapixel Sensor.

Top & Bottom View

Top down you can see the dials and controls located on the top of the camera. The “forehead” located above the lens pops up to activate a small flash unit. This can assist in getting images in lower light but they tend to be a little washed out. The bottom image on the right side is the battery compartment.

Side-Down View

This is the Side-Down views of the camera and in the top image you can see the access panel with USB, Power and Line Out. The Bottom image shows the zoom controls on the side of the lens. There is RFID and Bluetooth as well as Wireless.

Top Down Back & Front Views

The top down views of the front and back show the display and buttons to navigate and control the camera since the screen lacks touch sensitivity. The front shows other controls and the main lens, forehead containing the flash unit.

It lacks true manual control settings that essentially mimic the settings on old Film Camera with film iso, shutter speed and aperature setting. This is something that limited my ability to get good moon shots. Then I download the manual looks through the PDF and figured out there are scene modes designed for Lunar Photography. Adopting this mode and learning how it functioned and the controls I had over the captured image resulted in some truly impressive results. Some sample Lunar images from #instagram below.

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Naturally Bugging

So, eve since I relocated to the facility in the Dewitt Center, I have seen an increase in the variety and quantity of insects that I encounter on a daily basis with many of them being the flighted kind.

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They aren’t creepy and in many cases are quite beautiful.

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The WASP gave me the creeps and the lower part of its thorax seemed to be throbbing or pulsating.

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This has been what’s been occupying my time during the #covid19 #pandemic2020. Images taken with either the #motoe5plus or #nikon1J5.

Humor As A Muse

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A post shared by Eegore Beaver (@oldguystudent) on May 7, 2020 at 11:08pm PDT

My current living situation has limited and restricted internet access that is ran by Placer County and has severe restrictons on what websites can and cannot be accessed with Netflix streaming being blocked along with PornHub so that county workers cannot binge watch or self-love on the company dime.  Since the program has a #shelterinplace order that basically says unless it is an essential trip like doctor, pharmacy or store that you must #stayathome.  While all of my housemates are nice people we don’t have much in common enough to socialize, although they all seem to like me well enough.  I have always spent large amounts of time alone or socializing. When alone, I occupy my time researching apps for various tasks, hacking android and taking pictures.  I read a lot of News articles and watch a lot of YouTube too.  Add #marijuana to the equation and I spend a lot of time listening to music and taking random pictures of things to find something that inspires me to create something.  Sometimes I will spend an hour or more on a project, only to get frustrated from an inability to get te desired results and shelve the project only to come back with renewed enthusiasm with a new vision ofwhat I wanted.  Other times, some random thing picks my attention after I have shelved the project that leads to a new project.  This happed because of my friend Erek and some Cashews.   The image above came from taking multiple shots of the two cashews. then creating the collage and adding the look of a 35mm film negative.

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A post shared by Eegore Beaver (@oldguystudent) on May 8, 2020 at 12:44pm PDT

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The editor I use for the faces is built-in to Samsung devices running Android 7 or above. So, I have to transfer the images to a Samsung device and do the editing on there. This is another project that I got the idea for as I scrolled through my photos looking for a museand realized I could post the photos again and thereby reuse the image on Instagram while I wrote a completely different description for it. The three photos I posted generated more buzz in the form of likes and comments, so that inspired me to post a gallery.

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A post shared by Eegore Beaver (@oldguystudent) on May 8, 2020 at 12:50pm PDT

 

It was just a random Cashew that looked like it had an erect penis and another that looked like it had the perfect hole for that said projection to be inserted.  Yes, I was totally high and I probably spent four hours in total editing, cropping, arranging and modifying images to get the results shown here.  I may have taken fifty other images that weren’t like anything in this set that never got used becasue they couldnt be cropped to make them interesting to me.  Erek gave me some #bubblehash, a gram of flower and a Cookies #710 Concentrate cartridge.  That was last Friday, this Sunday, I’m #Dankrupt wishing I had more to amuse me and dialate time.

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Changes

So today, I transitioned from North Auburn and the ICP House to Roseville and the Francis House, leaving behind the friends that I had made then became attached to. When this plan was initially being discussed last week, I didn’t think it should have this profound of an effect on me, that once I did it, that I would be feeling this way. It has triggered my anxiety and depression for reasons that I cannot fully explain. In trying to work through it, I thought that i would share a couple of the #instagram posts that i have made over the last six weeks while i work through some of the clutter in my mind.

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So, I’m not sure that this is even going to work correctly by using the methods of in using, so I am going to test post it and see before I continue. The method works without having to actually use the #instagram website to generate embed code but also includes the description entered whenI shared the image. Just FYI, you clutc click the vertical ellipsis and select to copy the URL and then paste that URL in the Android App Editor and when you publish the post, WordPress does all the heavy lifting for you. There is a more convoluted method using the actual Instagram website through a web browser that letsyou generate the aforementioned embed code that lets you choose to not include the post description. At this juncture that’s too much work and would just add to my frustration. Leaving that in allows me to not have to include that for the photos in this post.

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I’m really a patient and forgiving friendand it usually takes a lot for me to get riled up. I had a falling out with a longtime friend last year and when tryingso the above instagram post, I actually clicked the Facebook button where I saw a party by him and decided to message and apologize. He blocked me which is fine, considering that if anyone audited or friendship, I put far more in to it, gave them far more support and access to my limited resources then I ever got in return. The dismissal of how much the took for granted culminated in the kerfuffle that caused the rift in our friendship. Just suffice it to say that I a out several hundred dollars for various computer and electronics that i loaned them for entertainment for th adults and their kids. A Notebook, Thumbdrive and external hard drive that cost over a hundred dollars each a the time because they didn’t care enough to pick then up and they got kicked and broken. The keyboard on th notebook got so thrashed with food a other shit that combined with the missing and dysfunctional keys made the unit unusable. Add to it the amount time and wear and tear on my vehicle I got driving him around to do Door Dash so he could convert his rent and not become homeless like I was. All the trips to specialized grocey stores so that his wife and kids could eat pescatarian. So, in a way, I know I’m much better off without that relationship in my life.

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One of the things that I knew i was going miss the most about leaving ICP Housewas the amazing front yard with redwood tree. The backyard was pretty amazing too with all of the dragon flies and humming birds. There were lots of humming birds. Although I am amused right now because an emergency vehicle went by and the neighbors dogs began yodeling and seemingly singing along which put a grin on my face.

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The one thing about all of these picturesis that they are taken with a very low priced, entry level Samsung Ggalaxy J3 Smartphone camera. The J3 Prime from 2017 and the J3 Orbit from 2018. This goes a long way to stroke my ego and show that it’s not nescarily the camera and is always more dependent on the photographer.

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You can make almost anything look amazingamazing using the full range of features available in various editing apps on Android. This Fly looks really cool, way more cool then the initial photograph that I captured where you could see the hair on my leg up close and grossly personal. Using multiple editors to crop, change levels and add effects and frames and overlays turned out in to this.

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The amount of hilarious fun you can have with otherwise normal, boring and mundane photographs is unlimited. One of my housemates, who was from England ate boiled eggs every day and one day, I took this pictureand then when trying to make it more interesting, came up with the idea to add the faces to them and this was the result. She thought it was hilarious.

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When I saw this insect that is a part the first time, it was because the house monitor pointed them out to me and explained they were eating the leaves of the plants in his garden. He told me that they were smart and fled when they saw him looking at them, which this one did when he saw me trying to take it’s picture. I was faster and better at taking the picture then it was at escaping unseen.

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I used to suffer from acute arachnophobia but with the assistanceof my ex-wife and the desire to overcome it, I have able to do just that. This is a Brown Widow that decided to hang out while I had coffee yesterday morning. Right after I took the picture, it disappeared and I packed my shit up and went inside. I’m stupid.

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This image took me hours to capture properly because of the clouds and the inherent limitations of the smartphone Camera and the Manual mode on the Samsung Galaxy Camera ssoftware. That bright dot off to the left is, of course, Jupiter.

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This one speaks for itself. An acquaintance, who I used to consider a friend has one of my cameras and I save been trying to get it back from him for several months and he always had an excuse why he couldn’t get it. Then he made me think he was going to bring it to me on Saturday and stopped answering and never showed up. I stopped calling after the second attempt and messaging when I told him I had given up calling and now messaging. He called me early on Tuesday and said he would call me back within the hour and would ensure that I got it that day. Same thing, no answer or response to text messages. I have decided that I won’t ever get it back and therefore I’m not going call or message him again. That’snot to say I am going to not answer if he wants to call me but I’m going tell him off the bat his word has no value in what he says is untrustworthy. I’m not going to be a jerk about it or be rude because that could make him feel justified and I want him to feel embarrassed and ashamed by acting let down and disappointed. This works better with people and dogs than anger and aggression.

So, I have worked through the anxiety and depression and need to find a beverage to cure my cottonmouth and get rid of the nasty taste in my mouth. I also need to take my evening medication and eat something. I’m truly going to miss the meals the house monitor at ICP House prepared for us each evening.

No Way Out

Turner Classic Movies showed the classic black and white film, No Way Out, made in 1950 and starring Syndey Poitier in his first movie role. It shows the realities of racism and bigotry at the beginning of the civil rights era that so many white people want to forget or ignore whenever a person of color mentions equality. In many ways, Segregation or the Jim Crow Era was infinitely more violent and devastating to Black Americans with many states lacking laws making it a crime for white people to violently abuse black people until 1955.

https://youtu.be/S1i5coU-0_Q

The same year as the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance in Back To The Future where a white middle class kid from suburbia tells the Black Male working at a restuarant that he had to enter by the back door and was forbidden by law from eating, that he could one day become mayor, then goes on to teach Marion and Chuck Berryabout Rock & Roll.

https://youtu.be/VYOjWnS4cMY

Childish Gambino, a music artist portrayed by actor Donald Glover made a song and video entitled This Is America that was incredibly rich with symbolism that created controversy when it should have ignited conversations about the meaning and references in the video. In the video, Childish Gambino is dressed like Jim Crow. I was hesitant to watch the movie when my housemate selected th channel and read the description but I wasn’t invested enough to protest since I was planning to go and watch another episode from Season 3 of Stranger Things.

Biological Imperative

All life on planet earth has one single biological imperative, to make copies of it’s DNA, thus passing on the most favorable traits to the offspring. Fitness is a measure if this ability to make copies of their DNA. All around us, from animals, to insects and plants, everything is having sex. As we slowly orbit the Sun, and the calendar progresses to the fall equinox and the time for the harvest, one could easily forget that the fruit being harvested is the result of plant sex and that flowers are plant genitalia. Many do not realize that bees, that help carry the pollen from the male plant to the female are involved in the sexual act of that plant.

This is the first time since I was 8 years old that I have been completely without a SLR type film camera, or fairly nice digital camera and it’s because some asshole decided he needed everything that I owned to buy methamphetamine and took them from me while I was trying to do something nice and generous for him.

The Kodak camera used above cost about $6 at Goodwill and I am sure the person who donated it never got photographs like this, because they require that you know how to operate not just the zoom, but also the manual settings for the camera. The things that you learn using film and a manual SLR. While it might have been able to have been captured with the automatic settings, it wouldn’t have been as sharp and clear.

Then there is this image of the full moon, which would have just been a bright white circle with the automatic settings of the camera and require a that you truly understand the manual settings and took me a bit of time to get just right and then a little bit of time to manipulate the various values using Google Photos limited built in editor. I take a lot of pictures, randomly throughout the day and when I see the moon, it usually gets a snap or two simply because it’s so amazingly beautiful to me.

While smartphone cameras have come a long way, the has a lens with moving glass for zooming and focus. This is clear to see in the image above taken on a 5 or so year old Kodak digital camera which was used to take all of the other pictures in this article that were not taken with the Samsung Galaxy S8. The moving glass is why I really want a other Motorola Z Force phone and the Hassleblad Moto-Mod.

Yes, Lady Bug Sex. It’s real and this is how they do it, because they are still driven by the same biological imperative as a 14 year old teenager in the midst of puberty.

Some species do it back to back and this picture makes it look like a spectator sport. I wonder if that’s another male and he is just waiting his turn? This is how my warped mind works and this is my blog for this incredibly disturbing Sunday to try and add a little humor to the current tragedies.