The joyful exuberance of ULTRAsomething’s childlike naïveté is over. Rebellion rages within — exacerbated by mood swings, sassiness, and a vexatious surliness. They grow up so fast, these cherubic little websites. As the calendar flips to Sagittarius, ULTRAsomething clocks another birthday — its thirteenth. A teenager!
While turning 13 is statistically quite common for humans, it’s a rather rare event for blogs… or whatever it is this website actually is.
In fact, many of the classic teen characteristics — such as recalcitrant independence, social awkwardness, and runaway identity crises — have been part-and-parcel of the ULTRAexperience since it was just an infant.
Which suggests, perhaps, that I’m wrong to frame this site’s 13th birthday in human terms. Maybe websites age more like dogs? In which case I’m happy to report that ULTRAsomething has just turned 91! It would certainly explain why I’m feeling far more introspective on this particular occasion than would be possible for any 13 year-old.
Then again, 91 implies the website’s demise is close at hand. If that’s the case, shouldn’t ULTRAsomething have more to show for a cradle-to-grave existence than a slovenly 234 articles, 1,500 published photographs, and roughly half-a-million words? That’s an output more worthy of a sloth than a dog.
Which, now that I think about it, is perhaps a more apt yardstick. In sloth years, ULTRAsomething has just turned 39. That’s an appropriate age equivalency for a site still developing new directional ideas, and that still believes it can one day succeed in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
So perhaps I’ll celebrate this, ULTRAsomething’s 39th birthday, in the most sloth-like manner possible — sloughing off all those extra words I was planning to write, and taking a nice leisurely nap.
©2021 grEGORy simpson
ABOUT THE PHOTOS: “Felicitous” and “Sun Spot” were both photographed with a Ricoh GRIII — the proper one with the 28mm lens, and not that newfangled 40mm job. Speaking of 40mm lenses, “Introvert” was shot with a 40mm f/2 Rokkor lens, mounted to a Japanese market Leitz Minolta CL stuffed with HP5+, shot at ISO 400, and developed in Rodinal 1:50. “Apropos of Most Everything” was snapped with a Konica C35 at ISO 100 on Acros-100II and developed in Rodinal 1:50. “Vancouver 12, Egor 1” was shot with an iPhone 12 Pro… yes, you read that right. And no, it’s still not a suitable substitute for a ‘real’ camera, but it is better than a Leica at checking email on the go.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
