All our Magic Macguffin campers are engaged in writing weekly letters back home to mom and pop or family they may have. Hatchet Jack, as you might imagine, has no family to write to. And Hatchet Jack really ain’t much of a wordsmith. He is more of a campfire tall tale kinda fellow. So Hatchet Jack is gong to talk like he is sitting around a campfire with some fellow campers on a warm evening by the shores of Lack Macguffin.

This week our campers started on some projects related to the animated Gif. The idea is to really focus in on a moment of time in a short sequence of images that a bit of motion makes stronger, or brings out the essence of the images message, or something like that. I made one with Randle McMurphy trying to lift an impossibly heavy water feature from a psychiatric hospital. He was straining and trying and tying so hard to get that damn thing out of the ground. His effort and determination was what I tried to capture.

This week we also had out bunkhouses assigned campers and we got to know them a little better. We came up with a bunkhouse name. Our bunkhouse 4 is called, “Slaughterhouse 4.” No relation to the word “Hatchet” in my name.

We also sent out a call for bunkhouse monikers or logos. I made one. It is below.

I tried to make it like a badge because at camp you might get badges. So we will be ready to sew on this badge if it should be the selected logo for our bunkhouse.

The administrators added a wonderful feature to our campsite. They added bunkhouse pages to we can see recent activity from just those in our bunkhouse.

This week Hatchet Jack saw as he was peering into the bright white of the internet saw two things. One being that it is commenting that holds the internet together. Some camper from another bunk mentioned that a Dr. Oblivion, who was once employed at this camp,  had apparently scrawled that into a tree years ago down by Lake Macguffin. The camper also noted that a Jim Groom has made similar comments, but slightly different language. He is known for saying, “Commenting is the adhesive that sucks the webs together.” Whatever. He appears to be a creepy guy.

In the white light Hatchet Jack also had a revelation similar to the one he had at Camp Counselor training day when the administrator @cogdog said, “There is no guilt in #ds106.”

The white blurted out to Hatchet Jack,

“There is no behind in #ds106, only forward.”

Jack thought that was a bright idea from the bright white light of thought.

So forward it is, and on we go campers!

Ol Hatchet Jack here flexing my digital Gif muscles with a little of one of my very favorite scenes in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. The scene has Randle attempting to lift a massive water fixture from the floor and toss it out the window of the hospital so he might wander on outta there. The patients know he can’t do it. Maybe Randle knows that too but he sure as heck is gonna try. And we find some wisdom in his words,

But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamn it, at least I did that.

Maybe I have some name connection to Jack Nickolson here. We are both Jacks after all. But more than that I think this scene in the move had some fine acting, similar to his presence in A Few Good Men when he is on the witness stand. Pretty amazing stuff. The lines in the book resonate with me as I learn myself to push my envelope a bit and try things I may not think I can actually do. I learned about that riding mountain bikes with teenagers too. I had to go first. I had to try lest they make fun of me or try it first and get hurt…

Jack did this gif using Photoshop and five screen captures from YouTube. Not the easiest, but it works save the grainy look. I added some “tweening” between the frames to smooth it out just a bit. The clip itself jumped real quick from his head looking down a little and then looking up. It was pretty fast in this scene.

So campers, let’s go give it a try and see what we find today!