Let me run Gavin Castleton’s site by you in case you’re new:

We busted our chops to make this completely original. Special.

We think it is pretty cool, and clearly James “Triple Threat” Choma at Iceburg Productions in Florida thought so too. From his portfolio description for SouthsideTattoo.net

If you are looking for a unique website, this is one to check out! This client said that they were interested in Vampires and Skulls to showcase their tattoo shop. Using Jquery tools we were able to build this unique side-scrolling website, complete with a Lightbox photo gallery.

Have a look:

"By" Iceburg Productions

While I luckily can’t claim responsibility for the vampires and skulls I will give myself props for the “unique website” part. Graphics aside: Gavin and I spent months making his site an original experience to complement his very original new album Home. Sure some of my graphics/css are still being used, but the framework/layout/concept that was labored over (with some freely available javascript mind you) is very much intact.

But they blew it: the two halves of gavincastleton.com are clearly symbolic. Divided. A split-screen. Sure it is fine to slide back and forth and look to look at a totally sweet piercing, but where is the heart behind that? Gavin’s got it. Literally.

Let’s compare “inner” pages:

and

Through the wonder of Google (gavincastleton.com search) I found that page titles on the iframe popups hadn’t been changed from GavinCastleton.com: http://www.southsidetattoos.net/faqs/piercing-q3.html. It is amazing that laziness in THEFT (keep in mind, you’re already way lazy for stealing someone’s work in the first place) caused me to find out about this. Just like it did for Optimum Design.

Should I start building my sites in Flash again? Should people stop being lazy and completely unethical? Neither one of those is going to happen, but something has to. I’m not sure I can handle the theft of another design.

I don’t care if it is really really really shiny, will play my music, and can display this website (and allow me to blog from it?!)…since the iPhone can’t change diapers or prepare a vegetarian meal for three, I can think of a few other places to invest $500.  Like a medium soft serve in a kiddie cone on my way home from work for the next 250 days.  Or a few plane tickets to get us the hell out of Ithaca for a weekend.  Or a goon to rough up whoever controls the temperature in my office building. But it will likely go to more diapers and food for vegetarian meals.

Company has left until next week, so I can once again melt in to a useless pile of mush at 10:30 and watch Scrubs.  Dreamy.  And is it ironic or pathetic that we can’t finish An Inconvenient Truth because it is too hot to sit still in our living room for that long?  Sorry Al.  I’m actually writing this from our balcony because using  a three-year-old PowerBook inside right now would melt through our desk.  And make us have to yell over the fan (combustion system?) inside it.  That’s 0 for 2 Apple, 0 for 2 (and cut your damn prices in half).

It’s times like this that I wonder what ridiculous things I’ll be complaining about in five years.  I mean, it’s not like I don’t have a roof over my head, or clean water to drink.  But really, the fact that the temperature inside right now would have felt cool to me on any of my days in India really does put things in perspective.  Like, no wonder I kept getting soft serve from McDonalds in Jaipur.  And like, some of the kids on the streets in Delhi have to put up with the heat and no food or shelter?  Jonah, you have it pretty good, with your Elmo and sippy cups, and clothes…

Six months from now you’ll find me in one of those remote, white “tundra” areas you see on the globe.  Eating ice cream.

I laughed about this a few years ago when my sister went through The Experience, but I couldn’t even chuckle when I looked into the mirror this morning and saw it smack in the middle of my head: The Grey Hair.

And why shouldn’t I laugh?  I’m young.  I’m healthy (ok, slightly malnourished).  I don’t care about a tiny, grey hair.

But there it is.  Flat, dull, and void of color, on top of my shiny red mane…the product of almost two years of parenting, nine years of avoiding assholes on the road, 17 years in school, six years of photoshop, and countless late nights watching Point Break.
What comes next, glasses? Arch support inserts? I guess I should be grateful, I mean at least I sill have hair.  Although I’m sure I’m not far off from that wonderful milestone.

This is such a lame, trivial moment but it is hard to overlook.  What happened to all those things I was supposed to do by 25?  You know, the cool, cliche stuff like skydiving, backpacking through Europe, headlining Lollapalooza, showing my ta-tas for beads…meth?

And does this mean I’m too old to play Super Mario Bros. 3?  Excitebike?

I guess I don’t know what it means, aside from the ritual that I’ll have to perform momentarily, which involves plucking The Hair from my head with chopsticks, igniting it with the flame of a sandlewood candle while listening to Phil Collins…naked.

And this probably isn’t a good time to bitch about our car hitting 100,000 miles either.

Hot days like today are ridiculous for a few reasons: 1) being outside just isn’t cool unless you’re looking at the ocean and 2) everyone is going to say something about it.

Conversation is definitely at a low when the discussion turns to weather, and the only thing worse than the inevitable “nice day” or “hot one” talk is knowing that it is going to happen.  Like I knew before I left that house that in a few minutess – at around 8:58am -  when I got to a certain spot that a certain someone would say a certain something about the current temperature.

I’m sure on some days I might get a kick out of such predictability, but not today.

This might at least be tolerable if I didn’t have to wear a hoodie at work to prevent my joints from freezing solid.  I don’t know if the building supervisor maintenance person (or whoever) thinks that our design shop just can’t handle controlling the temperature or what, but breathing on my hands to warm them up in June is a bit crazy.

At least I can watch the rest of that Al Gore documentary knowing  that whoever does control the temperature at 202 E State St. is going straight to hell.

Maybe it’s just because I’ve been using everyone else’s DSLRs lately or seen a million of them hanging off the necks of people who I’m sure have absolutely no idea how to use them – or appreciate them – but it’s about time to cash in one of the five-hundred credit card offers I’ve been getting JUST to buy a new camera. It’s time like this that I appreciate the sweet irony in going to school for film/photography and using their Hasselblads and Other Expensive Stff to get a degree that prevents me from getting a job* where I can afford that previously overabundant and underappreciated Stuff.

I write this because I was taking a lot of photos today, more than I usually do, and was pretty much ready to chuck my camera (which has taken some decent shots) into the gorge. I mean look at the noise in the shadows. I think I’ve pushed this thing as far as it can go.

But I did manage to snap a few nice shots of Jonah despite his unwillingness to stay in one place for more than half a second. I’ve been neglecting the camera because of its flaws and headache-inducing-mannerisms, but I do feel like I’ve been lacking in the baby documenting department. Which is my department.

* * to be continued (oh snap) * *

*My job is rad and my degree did not help in my getting hired. At all. Thought you should know (there’s still hope for all you folks with useless film degrees!).