I See By Your Outfit

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Dwight Lutsey

While perusing some of the photos that were originally on the now defunct *The Institutes hard drives this image popped up. It was familiar looking as if the rider atop his magnificent steed was known, perhaps a famous cowboy from the 60’s or 70’s. Was he in one of those westerns that were so prevalent back then? “Breakheart Pass” maybe or “The Cowboys”, surely not “The Wild Bunch”. The longer we viewed the image the more curious we became. The only clue we had was a cryptic note written in a firm but shaky hand that could have been written while horseback that said “Cattle Drive May 1973”. Could that have been the origin of this picture. After all that was 45 years ago, a time that will live in infamy. Another clue was the fact that the horse who was apparently named “WhoaBoy” had very short legs. They barely reached the ground, the herding dog, a corgi named “WatchIt! I’m walking here!” had longer legs. The mystery deepened.

We had to get to the bottom of this mystery to find out the secret of the cowboy, “Could it be done?” we asked ourselves. We went into the tuff shed where we had stored many of the records and old machinery and scratched off lotto tickets and other secret stuff from our long time association with The Institute, and found the Rolodex that contained all the names and addresses, dress sizes, cigarette preferences, land line numbers, (see Wikipedia for information on what a land line was) food allergies, relevant status, gender, personal info, shoe sizes, whether they were inked or not, (interesting side note here. Inked meaning Tattooed. Rarely anyone had a tattoo then, only hookers, some ex-military guys, people who had been in Russian prisons, and Alice What’s her name who had one in the coolest place, but that was it, you just never saw it, oh yeah Biker Bitches, they had them.) hopefully containing the one name that might help us in finding out more about this image.

There it was, the name and home number of one of our secret benefactors and researchers, Mr. Peabody, inventor of the pretty much forgotten WayBack machine. What’s more the start code for his WayBack machine was there too. And almost beyond belief was the very machine itself. Forgotten, stacked behind The Institutes collection of old National Geographic magazines, which are going to be worth a goldmine someday, but still workable as there were still glowing lights on the main GoBack panel. What a coincidence.

Mr. Peabody himself hasn’t been seen since Nixon and the Watergate thing happened but as he’d left the operating manual and full Power of Attorney to us to use the machine any way we deemed necessary, but only for good you understand, we hired a couple of burly college kids to haul the 4800 lb. machine out to where we could run an extension cord from the garage. Luckily we had a 20 amp wall plug-in our new quarters, so we would have plenty of power to get back to 1973 but more importantly to get back to today. Who wants to be stuck back in the 70’s, right?

One of the college kids, a burly but inquisitive youth named Todd, wanted to know what it was like to time travel, to go way back. In trying to describe the effect to him it became apparent to us that this WayBack machine, as handy as it was, had not been used or tested for a very long time. Like years. So we casually asked Todd if he would like to experience time travel himself. HIs answer was an enthusiastic “Yeah, but I got to be back for a math quiz this afternoon.” We assured him there was “No sweat. Time doesn’t count when you’re way back. It’ll seem like you didn’t even go.” We weren’t totally positive about that theory but it kind of made sense. So we quickly looked thru the manual one more time and did the check list countdown.

Sit in chair with back straight. Check. Fasten seat belt. Check. Do Not bring any food or drinks on trip. Check. Keep all hands and feet and other extremities inside the launch area. Check. Keep tray tables in their upright and locked position. Check. Fill in time to go to and when to come back on GoBack panel. Check. Hit button ,Yell Sayonara. Check.

Here’s where stuff kind of went off the rails. Todd the big lummox, kind of sprawled out to be more comfortable and sort of inadvertently stuck his foot out past the launch area and as soon as that big flash of light struck he was gone. Except for his foot. That big size 14 Birkenstock was still there filled with his foot up to the middle of his skull tattoo on his calf. The cut was surgically clean, no blood no gore, the cross-section as smooth as a piece of plastic. The toenails unclipped. It was Todd’s foot. His buddy, Evan, yelled something and came racing over to the WayBack machine and tripping over the extension cord yanked it out of the wall. There was a not good sounding electrical noise emitting from the GoBack panel and the machine went dark.

In looking through the operating manual under Trouble shooting Your WayBack machine there was a warning box that emphatically stated “Never Ever unplug the WayBack machine while in use. We mean it. Don’t do it.” It filled half the page. It went on to state if this happens the following parts must be replaced or retrieval of the traveler will be cancelled. Then there was a list of the parts needed. All would be readily available at your neighborhood RadioShack. We breathed a sigh of relief until someone mentioned “Didn’t they go out of business?” and it was like OMG! No freaking parts! Todd’s like almost legless stranded in the 70’s and we’re like S O L in doing anything to get him back. It was a dark moment when the implications began to set in.

This was bad, this was really bad. Evan was freaking out and was becoming totally unglued until we told him “Hey, it was you that unplugged the machine. Everything would have been cool if you weren’t so clumsy. You’re the one probably going to the slammer so quit your whining.” Thinking it over he decided that probably Todd would get some good care there, right? and wasn’t that the time when you had all those drugs and free sex.” We said we weren’t sure as our memories of those times were a little hazy but that sounded about right. He then decided that he would just go then, he had some homework to do or something. But not before we made him shove the WayBack machine back into the Tuff shed and restack all those National Geographic’s around it.

That left us with the fact that we had no way now to learn anything more about the handsome but young and virile looking cowboy in the image above. But given all the hassle and crap that we just went through we decided to hell with it. It wasn’t that big a deal. It was probably just some dummy that wanted everybody to think he was a cowboy, when in fact he wasn’t. Not even close. End of story.

But wait! What about Todd’s foot? Thinking that someday RadioShack would make a comeback and we’d be able to get those needed parts, and retrieve old legless Todd, we packed it in dry ice in an old cooler and threw it back there where the now useless WayBack machine was stored to be dealt with at another time. So we guess it’s just a case of all’s well that ends well. Just out of curiosity does anyone who reads this have a grandfather named Todd, that tells weird stories about time travel and the seventies? If so it’s probably just crazy talk. Ignore it.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Surrealism and Turkeys A Holiday Story

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Dwight Lutsey

Surrealism is seldom affiliated with Turkeys or the day in which we eat them. It is usually thought of as an art movement where in the words of one artsy art guy, its aim was to “resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality”. It’s like a really big deal in art circles and everyone who knows about it is very proud of their knowledge. Mainly because most real people don’t know what it is and the art guys get to look very smart when they talk about it.

So whats that got to do with turkeys, Thanksgiving, and the proper preparation of their carcasses. Normally we’d say not much, but in the case of our free-range turkeys here on *The Institute’s grounds it’s a very big deal, huge actually. Because of the fact that our Institute’s ~~hunters~~, I mean gatherers go out and collect about 150 male, female and children turkeys to feed our staff, interns and hangers-on each Thanksgiving, the turkeys have become very adept at camouflaging themselves in the weeks leading up to their Day of Doom as they call it. So adept that they have changed their DNA and developed strategic methods of keeping themselves from being harvested.

In the image above you can see one of the abilities that they have developed which is to project a dreamy, fog enshrouded look, a surrealistic mood if you will, to hide their passage past the commissary and its lurking Turkey harvesters. How is this possible you ask? It took us a long time to figure this one out ourselves, but after capturing one male turkey and giving him a tour of the modern hygienically sterile robotically equipped turkey processing center and offering him immunity, he spilled his guts (figuratively speaking) and showed us his genetically improved body. There are glands beneath their wings that will emit a heavy misty fog like atmosphere around them as they walk and flap their wings. The more they flap the greater the fog until they are virtually undetectable. This is pretty remarkable if not unbelievable when you think about it.

The turkey above is one Mrs. Breton with her children Andre, Cecily and Yolanda, A Surrealist of the first order, heading off into the far reaches of the Institutes back country until the holidays are over. As they pass through the fog they utilize the other major protective defense they have developed, a substance they call turkey sweat which is secreted by more glands on the bottoms of their feet. As they walk they leave a trail of this turkey sweat which has strong hallucinogenic properties that are picked up and dispersed thru the fog causing anyone within 800 yards of the turkeys to see things very differently. Everything becomes extremely surrealistic. Kind of like that acid trip you came down from once while rafting down the Colorado river and watching the walls of the Grand Canyon turn vivid hues of color like an old Technicolor movie before melting and threatening to capsize the boat.

We had been wondering why our Turkey harvest had gone from the hundreds down to like four this year. Now we know. Everybody connected with harvesting the usually plentiful flock of birds has been sitting around in the meadow chewing on grass stems and looking at the sun for long periods of time. Although we have our anti-hallucinogenic department working feverishly on an antidote to the Turkey problem it looks like we’ll be having sauerkraut tacos with fried okra and perhaps some spaghetti dumplings for Thanksgiving dinner this year. But that’s better than nothing at all which is what the Canadians have each year as they thoughtlessly continue to not celebrate Thanksgiving. They’re fat, dumb and happy up there eating moose parts with lard cakes and spam balls dipped in pine needles. But that’s their choice. If they weren’t so nice we’d hold that against them.

We hope to have the Turkey problem under control next year at this time but in the meantime everyone here at The Institute wishes you a very Happy Thanksgiving. If you feel funny later in the day it was probably the turkey. Just lay down for a while. It should be ok.

Home Wrecker

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Dwight Lutsey

Home wrecker. You think you know what they look like. The image above is of a home wrecker. It’s a Flicker. One of the meanest home wreckers there are. Don’t be fooled by the soft dreamy photo of this Flicker, which was put out by the Flicker Anti-Defamation League or FADL, to try and counter all the bad press these birds get. Their bad image is well deserved and even understated. This is pure propaganda similar to the information and images put out by various candidates in our current elections. Yes you might look at his photo and say “My what a lovely bird. ” and you’d be right but there is a sinister story behind those muted colors and strong but nasty beak.

There are several definitions as to what a homewrecker is, such as this one from wickiLoops or wikiUp or whatever it’s called. It gives the most accepted version of what a home wrecker is.

Homewrecker

A homewrecker (sometimes styled as home wrecker or home-wrecker) is a person, object or activity that causes or comes close to causing the breakup of a marriage (or similar partnership). The homewrecker is said to have taken one of the spouses away from the marriage, thus “wrecking” the marital home.

Then there is the definition from the only dictionary worth reading, which is the Urban Dictionary.

homewrecker

One who comes into your life, and screws it all up. This involves stealing your boyfriend/girlfriend, puppy, your friends, your secret lasagna recipe until they pretty much take over your entire life and thus your life is like totally wrecked forever and you wind up pathetic and ruint, shunned by all, even those who were once your best friends because they might have even been one of the homewreckers. from Urban Dictionary

It is supposed to be taken in the quantity viagra no prescription overnight that is been suggested to them. Similarly, generico viagra on line men allergic to Tadalafil should avoid using Tadalista. It reverses aging effects through rejuvenating aging cells. samples of levitra cheap cialis for sale The variations of agni due to tridoshas are of 4 types.

But there is one more definition that is fast gaining “legs” especially among those that live in the mountains with heavy Flicker infestations. It is from *The Institutes own free-range dictionary.

HomeWrecker

Noun: One who wrecks your house. Literally. HomeWrecker, a heinous feathered Leftist bird that believes your house should be its house and primary food-source regardless of how much money you have invested in it: Any bird, but mostly Flickers, that bite, chew, gnaw, peck, eat, make huge holes, sublet those holes to other Flickers, cause other Flickers to join them by making raucous calls around dinner time, and displays a total disregard for others property rights: An entitled bird: An irritation: One which will pound its beak against anything metal at daybreak to let you know it is back to wreak havoc on your domicile and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. In other words a Flicker.

The image above is another put out by FADL to give those without prior knowledge of Flickers the idea that Flickers are like song birds. That they are golden-throated temptress similar to larks and buntings that simply sit around singing “Gloriatas” and “hymns to the woodlands” and such. They don’t. They sound like garbage trucks in their crush cycle. You can’t tell that by looking at the picture, that’s how they fool you.

No, what these homewreckers do is eat your house. They get up high near the eaves and chew great big holes in the side of your house. Big holes. Holes big enough that whole entire birds can fit inside and live there if they want. Rain can get in there, snow too, even. And if you have a structure made out of logs similar to the original building that The Institute grew from, they take extra special glee in biting it up. They think it resembles the trees they used to have to eat when times were tough, and no one had started putting up places for them to more easily destroy under the guise of eating bugs.

So what to do about Flickers then. You can’t just shoot them, they’re protected. Explaining the deductible you have on your insurance policy doesn’t help, they don’t care. Yelling at them and insulting their parentage doesn’t work, it just makes them grin at you. No the only tried and true method of discouraging Flickers is to use a Whippy Stick.

A Whippy Stick is a patented device created right here in our anti-flicker labs at The Institute that is a 20-25′ long, thin ‘whippy’ stick cut out of a strong board so it doesn’t break while you’re flailing around with it during use. The application is simple. Flickers like to stay close to the craters they create and will often sleep right next to them. You go out at night with a flashlight you hold in your mouth and spot the Flicker way up there next to the eave. Then carefully lifting the Whippy Stick up to its full height of 25′ , try and whack the Flicker with it by using a strong whippy back and forth action. Be very careful while doing this as 25′ of whippy stick thrashing around over your head can make you trip over the deck chairs in the dark, make you drop the flashlight, skin your knee and break the porch light. The object is to smack the offending Flicker with it somewhere on its person thereby scaring the bejezus out of it while it’s sleeping. Flickers are very heavy sleepers so sometimes it takes several really good whacks to get it to wake up. There is usually a lag time while the Flicker figures out what’s going on and a skillful Whippy Stick wielder can usually get in another whack or two before it flies off into the darkness screeching in indignation.

This usually works but because Flickers have a tiny little brain, much like some of our friends who believe their candidate is the one to vote for (he isn’t) that is often damaged due to the constant battering of its head against the side of your house. It takes many applications of the Whippy Stick to get it to change its habits. Almost every night in fact. They come and try to drill holes to knock your house down during the day and you try and whack them senseless at night. It’s sort of like that endless battle between good and evil. It’s a constant struggle.

But in any event we wanted to share these images of Flickers for two reasons. First,so you would know about the campaign to paint Flickers in a new positive light by FADL, lulling you into a false sense of security so you go ahead and build your log house in a Flicker prone area and two, because if you don’t live in a log house in the woods and haven’t seen many Flickers in the wild they are kind of pretty to look at.

Greenery

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Dwight Lutsey

There have been cards and letters arriving daily from readers all over the place, but mostly from those that are buttocks deep in snow and cold. Some have been angry. “Do something about this weather you ….. ” Some have been sad. “Please I beg of you change the weather, please” this one had actual tear drops on the email. Some have been depressed. “I’ve been on hold for two and a half hours. Don’t they man these suicide hotlines anymore. Are you going to do anything about this weather, ok nevermind. I’ll take care of it.” We tried to reach this individual right away but his line was busy. If you ever feel this strongly about the weather immediately move to Belize or maybe Costa Rica. It doesn’t snow there, ever. It’s always nice and they have monkeys.

The reason we get these letters is because we have a weather modification machine that we can use to create desirable weather for those people we like, but unfortunately the Tuff Shed we store it in was damaged by a wind-driven snow storm and one of the unbreakable panels fell on the machine and broke the rare European 12AT7/ECC81 Vacuum tube that sat on the top of the machine. Of course it is critical to its function and we can not change any weather without it. RadioShack is out of them and is waiting on a backorder. Apparently there has been a run on these tubes as others who have weather modification machines in their garage or wherever have suffered damage to their machines as well. The tubes are made by a small family run company in Czechoslovakia which we understand has been split into two countries, Left Czechoslovakia and Right Czechoslovakia, so we don’t even know where to send them our order. We apologize for any inconvenience but this how modern commerce works today. Don’t blame us, blame “Just in Time Inventory control” we have nothing to do with that.

A few of us were sitting around the small compact nuclear reactor that we use to power many of The Institutes needs, just pressing the bottoms of our feet against its sides where it is the warmest and talking about being warm. That little dark-haired woman we call SK was acting silly and pressing her butt up against the sides of the reactor on a dare and the conversation turned to what it was like when you were a kid and wanted comforting.

One of the PhD’s who was putting ointment on a particularly bad burn on the soles of his feet, who is old but can still remember stuff, talked about how he liked to crawl into someone’s lap when he was younger, preferably a bigger woman like his mom or an aunt, or the neighbor lady who liked to come over just because she liked him crawling into her lap. It was back in the days before PC or political correctness became the law and you could say big, or heavy, or even fat if you knew the person real good and she didn’t get mad at you for saying it. He said he liked the warmth and softness of them and how he could wiggle until he felt just right and sometimes he would even fall asleep.

None of us thought he was too weird but then Ethan, the new intern that we use to change the fuel rods in the reactor, said he would like to get naked and squidgle down into the leaves in the picture above. Wrap up in them and feel how warm they were. The sun would make them feel like big soft green marshmallows and it would feel so good that maybe he just wouldn’t be able to stand it. We all thought that Ethan should have a short break from fuel rod duty, maybe get in to the clinic to see what could be done about all of his hair loss. After he wandered off to find his lead-lined gloves we all talked about the green in the picture. How it seemed like you could fall into the green and just roll around on it. It had to be warm, like human skin warm, to get that green.

It certainly is not the same as summer but gathering around the heat source of your choice and looking at pictures that warm your soul if not your body seems like a good way to spend your long winter day. We’d write more but Ethan just jerked open the reactor door to change one of the fuel rods so we had to go out and wait in the hall for him to finish. It seems like it is taking him longer and longer to complete what should be a simple chore. OK then, Stay warm.

If you insist on knowing more about our weather modification program perhaps the following posts may help you.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/bad-weather-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/thors-revenge/

Terraforming – Good or Bad?

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Dwight Lutsey

Since our post titled ‘Behind The Ridge’ http://www.bigshotsnow.com/behind-the-ridge/ was posted the other day our mailboxes have been filled with a huge amount of mail, some protesting vehemently our misuse of our Nations natural resources, “How dare you move a national landmark!” “We’ll see you tarred and Feathered you….!” “I’m telling my congressman, you bastard !!!” “We’re coming out there and when we get our hands on you you’ll wish you were….!” These were just a few of the printable comments we received from those with a slightly different viewpoint than ours.

We also received many comments in support of our project.” Rad, Dude.” was one. “That was awesome!” was another. “What are you guys talking about anyway?” This one kind of fell in the middle so we put it in the plus column. But the one we want to focus on is this one ” How did you guys do that and like, not screw up the earth, man?”

This question points to something that goes right to the heart of The Institute’s core values. Which as we have stated countless time before is “Do No Harm. None. Not Any.” If there might be harm, like my dad used to say “Doan Doit…I mean it, You doit you get a whippin.” So our prime directive is in place and guides us through all of our major projects. Even the ones where it looks like we are defiling, but not raping, that would be bad, the land.

How is this possible then, you might ask. How do you move a mountain and not leave permanent damage. The answer of course is Terraforming. Terraforming is a term that simply means the Earth-Shaping of a planet, moon or other body and is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface, topography or ecology to be similar enough to the environment of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life. That’s all there is to it. Put it back like it was. Or how it should have been had it been done right in the first place, or even make it cool again after you screw it up.

Moving the mountain in the first place was fairly simple. We simply drilled holes in the bottom of the mountain, set pins with hook eyes in them, glued them in with gorilla glue, tied a whole bunch of helium-filled balloons to the hook eyes until it lifted, then hooked a small plane to the front and hauled it off. Our tow plane was a 1946 PIPER J3, C-65HP, TTA 1286, 260 SMOH with a midnight blue paint job to cut down on visibility. We timed it to start shortly after sunset on a moonless night and just headed up the Rockies until we got to The Institute. We cut the balloons loose and it dropped right into place. Easy-Peezy. We’re making it seem pretty simple but a lot of planning went into this project. Some of it we have to keep confidential to protect our phony baloney jobs due to slight violations of air space between states, some antiquated laws regarding taking mountains across state lines, endangerment of wildlife excepting birds, some property damage due to falling rocks, but by and large it went pretty well.

The other half of the problem took quite a bit more work. Due to the laws of the sovereign state of Arizona you can not just go off in the back country with D9’s, backhoes, unlicensed four-wheel drives and start rooting around there in the wilderness. That ‘s sacred cow stuff to those folks due to the possibility of contaminating the land, water, and ozone layer. So we had to resort to old-fashioned methods and repair the hole by hand. We sent three eighty passenger busses full of interns down there with all the tools they’d need, like shovels, hoes, Pulaski’s, steel-toed boots, come-a-longs, baseball hats, seven or eight cases of bottled water and set them to work terracing the slopes of the hole we left when we yanked that mountain out of there.

We think it turned out pretty good. We got it all terraced, set in our own patented erosion control material, even put in a road to get down to the bottom if you wanted to, absolutely free of charge. The toughest part however was getting the color right. We gathered images from all over the Southwest to get a handle on how we should finish this and we came up with a pretty good color scheme. Fortunately we had and old Sikorsky helicopter left over from another project and after fitting it with a customized spray painting unit on a 360°, computer-controlled laser guided gimbal with integral spray head we went to work. Gallons later of paint, varnish, stain, india ink, crushed up pastel colors, liquitex acrylic paint, custom-made oil finishes, buffing compound, and liquefied stone stabilizer, we were finished. I’d say it looks like it has been there for years myself. One of the city council guys who went out to check on the work couldn’t even find the spot we had done, it looked so real.

So to all those whiners out there who would complain if they were hung with a new rope, we say “Look. Go on out there. We dare you to find where we made the switch.” The proof is in the terraforming. We leave it up to you to answer the question “Terraforming – Good or Bad?” We think good.

Reemergence

Posted on November 22, 2015 by Dwight Lutsey

One of the tales we have posted in the past dealt with the heart-breaking story of the Scottish Thistle farmers of the Jackson Hole area in Northern Wyoming. Briefly, they were early immigrants to the area and brought with them their ways, traditions, farming techniques, and a streak of bull-headiness seldom seen in an area noted for its stubbornness.

As described in this earlier post http://www.bigshotsnow.com/thistle-farm/ these new comers to the valley were bound and determined to sow their seeds and reap the harvest of thistle thereby capturing and dominating the thistle market. But due to ignorance and the refusal to take any advice regarding the agricultural limits in this part of the country they met with a stunning defeat, a failure of magnificent proportions, that bankrupted each and every family in the thistle industry.

Soon they were seen leaving the area. All their earthly goods piles into wains of all sizes, their women walking listlessly behind them, some carrying nursing babes at their breasts, the children, the few who had not died from the harsh unforgiving conditions dragging their hoes behind them. The little furrows they left the only sign of their passing. Some of the older men pushing their wooden wheelbarrows ahead of them, still filled with unplanted thistle seed, their hope for the future, as they headed for the new promised land in Nevada. They had heard that the conditions there were perfect for growing thistles and with that dream in their hearts they left Jackson Hole and its surrounding area forever.

The remaining thistle left behind unattended soon withered and died until there were no more thistle plants left alive in the valley. It was as if they never were. However every once in a while a fence rider would come into town and after a few daiquiri’s, or a Golden Grasshopper, both without the little umbrellas in them, this is the west after all, would tell of seeing a thistle plant growing next to a fence post. Of course he was immediately cut off and thrown out of the bar. No one wanted to hear that crazy talk. It was like the stories of Bigfoot or happy marriages, there are some things you just don’t talk about.

For years the plains were empty of thistle, stories of their reemergence swept aside as the ravings of sunblind drovers and frost bitten cowboys. Then one fateful day in early March a prospector came staggering in to town nearly dead from exposure. Clutched in his hand was a thistle. Just the red part but undeniably a thistle. The town needless to say was on the edge of mass hysteria, some not knowing whether they had been snakebit or struck by lightning. Others ran around in circles hollering “Woe are we! The thistles, they’ve returned.” Others unable to stand the stress and strain immediately got blind drunk and were last seen staggering off into the wilderness. It was a time of chaos. A time of fear.

Before long, cooler heads prevailed and the largest posse ever assembled in Teton County, Wyoming was galloping out to find and root out these thistle plants wherever they may be. They were out seven months but finally they returned with a small group of thistle tied across the packhorse’s panniers. The thistle’s heads lopped off as a symbol of victory and worn around their necks as badges of honor. They assured the nervous townsfolk that they had eradicated the thistle from the countryside and it was gone forever. A huge sigh of relief was heard throughout the land and people began to go back to work, safe in the feeling that thistle was gone and gone for good.

But the story is not over, as they seldom are, and it was one of The Institutes own researchers that was responsible for bringing it back to life. We had sent our own Scottish descendant of one of the very first families to settle in the area, Somerfed Fyfe Olgilvy Callum Ewan McLean-Kennedy/Burns or as we all knew him, Tim, to see if there was any truth to the stories of the Reemergence of the Scottish thistle. What he brought back was nothing less than remarkable, clear photographic proof that thistle was alive and well and growing in Teton County. Tim wanted to keep the location secret to protect the plant but we said no Tim, this is too big a story. We have to inform the public. People have to know about the return of the thistle. It’s their right. What the future will bring with this knowledge is anyone’s guess, but I can tell you this, the story is not over. Not while The Institute is still in existence. We will out the truth regardless of consequence. Even if it creates a thistle emergency in Jackson Hole. Let the seeds fall where they will.

Going To The Sun

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Dwight Lutsey

Since we are waiting for the 8000+ images taken of the North American Indian Days event to come out of The Institutes proprietary image developer. The one we had constructed under the auspices of our own Hardware Development Group (TI-HDG) and specially built to handle large jobs by a triumvirate of IBM, Apple, and ACME Pixel Burner and Screendoor factory to finish the initial processing, we thought we would share another shot from Glacier National Park.

This is a 14 image panorama stitched together in Photoshop under a license with Adobe systems and The Institute, which has been carefully monitored by our own staff of panorama techno nerds using our own casually leased monitors throughout the process. At the risk of boring you stupid with the technical details we realize that are at least three of you out there that actually care about this technical stuff, so we decided to share the details to enlighten the unenlightened and to fill up page space as we don’t have a lot to say about this image otherwise.

The original images were taken with a professional digital camera set to stun and the resulting pixels were ported to The Institutes own diesel-powered mainframe computer where they were checked for robustness and cohesiveness before being divvied up into equal quantities and parceled out to the 14 techs used for the initial joining process.
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The next step is the labor intensive part of the procedure where the individual techs who have each been given the amount of pixels to complete one image, lay out the pixels one by one in numerical order on a large clean white piece of poster board. When one image is fully laid out the next tech steps up and begins to lay out his pixels adjacent to the first image so that the pixels touch at the long edge of the orientation. Then a specially formulated glue developed by The Institute and the Amalgamated Glue Workers Union under the watchful eye of NASA, because this is Space like science we’re working with here, and each individual pixel is glued to its matching neighbor on the other image until the two images edges are joined. This entire procedure is then repeated until all 14 images are joined into the one big image you see on the screen today.

The resulting panorama must be left on the poster board for at least 3½ hours for the glue to set and another 5 days for it cure properly so that the images do not separate when you lift them off the paper. At this point the utmost caution is required as the image has the consistency of a freshly molded sheet of very thin jello. This is the hard part. The waiting, because you really want to pick up the image and hold it up to the light to see what it looks like. But just like a fine wine, no image can be picked up before its time, otherwise it will fall apart and you have to start all over again. There is nothing more discouraging than to see the thousands upon thousands of pixels drip off the page and gather together like beads of mercury to fall off the table and scatter to the edges of the room. Grown men have cried at this sight.

Usually the whole process is worth the time and expense, not to mention the nerd power tied up in the project, but it still must be used sparingly. You don’t want to waste this on taking a panorama of your sock drawer. This is the valley seen from the Going To The Sun highway just before you get to the visitors center, and it carries Reynolds creek downstream toward Heavy Runner mountain way off in the background there. Now you could have taken this image as one shot with your smart phone, without going through the panorama business, but had you done so everything in the picture would be itty-bitty scrunched up, tiny little pixels and you wouldn’t have been able to see nothing. Just a bad picture, even though your friends would probably say it was beautiful, trust me, it isn’t. They just say that because they’re your friends and they like you.

OK then, we expect to have images popping out the developer soon so we can begin posting them for you to see everything that happened at the North American Indian Days celebration. Hang in there.

BigShots Now

A conversation about Photography: Images and Commentary by Dwight Lutsey

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