Check out my latest article for the Pink Line Project on great gift ideas for local photographers. While geared primarily for photogs in DC, there are some gifts good for shooters anywhere.
Author: Joe Flood
Joe Flood is a writer, photographer and web person from Washington, DC. The author of several novels, Joe won the City Paper Fiction Competition in 2020. In his free time, he enjoys wandering about the city taking photos.
WordPress DC: Introduction to Themes and Theme Development with Thad Allender
This month’s meeting of WordPress DC was an introduction to themes and theme development.
WordPress DC is a monthly meetup group of WP developers, designers and bloggers. The meeting was held at Fathom Creative, in a beautiful second floor space overlooking 14th St. With hardwood floors and track lighting, it’s pretty enough to be an art gallery. And it has been – just last month, this space was host to Instant DC, an exhibit of amazing photos taken by cellphones. (It’s hard to believe but just a few years ago this building was an auto repair shop.)
There were about forty people in the audience, most of whom were WP developers, though there were also designers and bloggers, like me. And since developers were present, there was, of course, free beer. That seems a requisite for geeky meetups. Continue reading “WordPress DC: Introduction to Themes and Theme Development with Thad Allender”
Gift Ideas for Aspiring Filmmakers
Check out my Pink Line Project article on gift ideas for aspiring filmmakers, including membership in local organizations, such as Women in Film and Video and Arlington Independent Media. Making a short film doesn’t need to be expensive and DC is filled with filmmakers willing to help out.
One thing I’ve learned as a judge for DC Shorts over the years is that there are plenty of good technical people. They can get the sound right and light a scene correctly. And every city, it seems, contains talented actors who can make your script sing.
The hard part is getting the story right, in making sure that you have a script with a beginning, middle and an end. Something with an identifiable protagonist and stakes that really matter. My article concentrates on the storytelling part of filmmaking. It’s easy to pick up a camera but much harder to tell a good story.
WikiLeaks and Shame by Salman Rushdie
A good chunk of the recently released WikiLeaks documents deal with the problem of a nuclear-armed Pakistan in the grip of radical Islam. Despite the billions of dollars in US aid they receive, they are unwilling to cut ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
One diplomatic cable on the New York Times site is called Will Extra Aid Persuade Pakistan to Cut Ties to Extremists? American diplomats discuss whether giving Islamabad more money will lead them to cut ties with the Taliban.
The author concludes:
There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups…
Islamic terrorist groups like the Taliban are key element of Pakistani security. They provide a hedge against India by securing Afghanistan and by causing problems for India in Kashmir. Continue reading “WikiLeaks and Shame by Salman Rushdie”
WikiLeaks and Absurdistan
One of my favorite novels of the past few years is Absurdistan
To get back to the United States (and the love of his life), he travels to the Caucasus republic of Absurdistan. He hopes to get a visa there. Along the way he joins in epic bouts of drinking and conspicuous consumption, as the nouveau rich show off their wealth with huge bounties of caviar, vodka and prostitutes.
This is fiction, or so I always thought, the invention of a very funny writer. But then I read the WikiLeaks cable on the wild wedding in Dagestan, Russia. It’s like the world of Absurdistan come to life, featuring a rich cast of characters frolicking along the shores of the Caspian Sea. The cable even has the perfect blurb for the back of a paperback:
The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance.
Continue reading “WikiLeaks and Absurdistan”
The Perfect Gift for Mystery Lovers – Murder in Ocean Hall
Do you have someone on your Xmas list who likes a good mystery, particularly one set in Washington, DC?
Then check out my novel, Murder in Ocean Hall. In this mystery, the world’s most famous ocean explorer is killed at the Smithsonian. It’s up to a cynical DC detective to solve this high-profile case.
Murder in Ocean Hall takes place in a Washington “beyond the monuments”, in the real neighborhoods of the city that most tourists don’t see. Set during the summer before the 2008 presidential election, we follow Detective Thomas across the city as he encounters the powerful and the powerless in his quest to solve this case. He’s grown bitter from decades of investigating bloody mayhem on city streets. Despite the new condos and gentrification, has the city really changed? Or is it doomed to dysfunction?
I’ve lived in DC for almost twenty years. I know the neighborhoods, the conflicts and the personalities of this unique city. I’ve been behind the scenes at the Smithsonian and worked in the field of ocean exploration, where my murder victim comes from. The book is set in places I’ve lived in and is informed by that most universal DC experience, street crime. It features some real characters, including a brief appearance by Marion Barry (no book in DC would be complete without him).
A reviewer wrote about my book that it:
will take you behind the scenes of places you’ve been and tell you how they function then give you insights into people in power and how they fail to function.
Murder in Ocean Hall makes a great gift for anyone who likes a good mystery or wants to uncover the seedy underbelly of our nation’s capital.
And if you live in DC, I will even sign it for you!
Murder in Ocean Hall is available exclusively at Amazon. The paperback is only $9.99 while the Kindle edition is just $2.99.
Do You Have a Minute for…
On the streets of DC, there is a proliferation of well-meaning people soliciting for good causes. It’s not just the holidays, they’re parked on sidewalks year-round. Clever, too, for they patrol in two-person teams and stake out opposite ends of the block. I have been known to walk in the street or pretend to talk on my iPhone to avoid them.
Do You Have a Minute is a post I wrote for FlackRabbit, a blog on PR. My argument: these street teams cheapen the reputation of the charities they represent.
The TSA, Blogger Bob and George Orwell
There’s been a lot of discussion going on at GovLoop about a post I did about the TSA blog. In it, I asked whether the TSA blog was supposed to be propaganda or the unvarnished truth.
GovLoop is an online community designed to be “Facebook for feds”.
I objected to the fact that “Blogger Bob” from the TSA categorically states that no one is being groped at airport checkpoints. This is so far removed from reality to be laughable. Anyone who has opened a newspaper or turned on the news has seen countless reports from ordinary citizens about being felt up at TSA checkpoints.
Blogger Bob responded to my post on GovLoop. He accused me of spreading misinformation. He puts “groping” in quotes as if it’s all a big misunderstanding. This agent of the government is disappointed in me. That’s a bit worrisome, considering the tools the TSA has to make my life difficult.
Friends of Blogger Bob defended him in the comments. One person even texted me privately. They say he’s a good guy. I’m sure he is. I’m sympathetic – being a blogger for the TSA has got to be an impossible job.
I’m a big fan of government blogging. When I worked at NOAA, I set up a blog and advocated for greater blogging within the organization. The scientists at NOAA do fascinating work that deserves greater coverage.
But government bloggers work for the people. They have an obligation to be truthful. They’re not supposed to do propaganda – that’s expressly illegal. When I was at NOAA, the feds I worked with stressed to me that we were public servants. All of us, contractors and feds, united to provide quality, vetted information to the public.
“Our work speaks for itself,” one veteran fed told me, declining to do any PR at all about what they did.
Government bloggers have an obligation to be truthful. When they deny the obvious (no one is being groped) that destroys their credibility. And the Orwellian language is even worse – “enhanced patdowns” for that hand on your groin.
Winston Smith rewrote history in 1984, changing the facts to match the policy of the day. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia…
It’s a dangerous path that the TSA is on. Instead of providing factual information, they give us taxpayers self-serving spin. I hope that the TSA and government bloggers turn away from this future. Because at the end of this long road lies Winston Smith, in a cubicle, sending inconvenient facts down the memory hole.
Fall Fringe: What to See
Check out the article I wrote for Pink Line on what to see at Fall Fringe. What’s great about Fall Fringe (which ends Nov 21) is that it’s only the best stuff from the Capital Fringe Festival. I saw a lot of theater, good and bad, as one of the official photographers for the festival over the summer.
I loved Ridgefield Middle School Talent Nite (it’s brilliant and hilarious) but I have soft spot for accessible Shakespeare which is why Romeo and Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending was my favorite show of the festival.
Bonus: see a slideshow of photos from the show.
FotoWeek DC 2010: “To Publish or to Self-Publish?”
Only three years old, FotoWeek DC has blossomed into a city-wide event encompassing gallery shows, competitions, lectures, workshops, portfolio reviews and parties.
There’s a lot of great free stuff to attend. In addition to gallery shows, there are some interesting lectures and workshops going on this week.
One of them was “To Publish or to Self-Publish” held at the Corcoran over the lunch-hour today. While it was billed as a comparison of traditional photo book publishing against the new on-demand model, the discussion was much broader than this. Continue reading “FotoWeek DC 2010: “To Publish or to Self-Publish?””