DesignKitty

Click. Happy Father’s Day.

I don’t plan to write on this blog this weekend so I thought that posting this early would be a good idea.

When I was in college I remember lugging around cameras all over the place. I would take pictures of my roomies, my friends, the campus and everything else around me. It was a little strange. Or stereotypical, when you think about it. Hey, look! There’s the Asian with the camera!

I took those pictures wanting to be able to capture that moment of our lives. We were what my wife’s cousins are today: young, invincible, carefree and mischievous. Everything was funny; every second was a great time. Being able to snatch those moments from Father Time has provided me with a wealth of memories.

Back then we still had to deal with rolls of film or the APS (Advanced Photo System) rolls or maybe even the Polaroid cartridges. After shooting everything under the sun we’d drop off our film and, if we were anxious and had the money, pay for the 1 hour film developing. Other times we were too poor and we waited a day or two. It was pretty expensive in both time and dollars.

These days digital cameras make taking pictures so much easier. Digital point and shoots, DSLRs and even camera phones let us catch everything under the sun without the hassle of having to wait. What’s even better is that we can take videos with them. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you any of this, right? Preserving the moment, the feelings, the time by using modern technology has become almost second nature to most of us.

What I didn’t understand until later in my life was how important this was to me.

Right now, I don’t have kids. The closest thing to a child to me are my pets whom I love with every fiber of my being. I am so lucky that I have pictures and video of my boy Tobey who passed away the day after Christmas, 2008. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. Being able to see his big goofy face in pictures and see him in videos happily bounding all over the place makes me both happy and sad. I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for my pictures and videos of Tobey.

The same could be said of the following two videos. If my sister gets mad because she and her daughters are in them then I’ll take them down. However, this is what I have:

My dad trying to get my (then 6 month old) niece Sabrina to dance and pay attention to him
http://designkitty.com/media/dad.birthday2.flv

My dad with his birthday cake (which is kind of funny considering he was a diabetic)
http://designkitty.com/media/dad.birthday.flv

I have pictures of my dad – he’s with the family, he’s with me, old pictures from when he was in the Navy and more. But those two videos are the only ones that I have with my father in them. I can see him laughing, dancing, speaking. Just like my experiences with my Tobey videos I’m both happy and sad. I can see and hear my dad just as he was. I can see him smile.

That’s what I have for Father’s Day this year: A memory trapped in bits and bytes that I’ll treasure for as long as I live. I encourage all of you to take as many pictures and as many videos as possible since, these days, it is so easy and economical. You’ll never regret being able to go back and look at them.

Deciding Whether I Should Be Physically Fit or Physically Fat

39. I’m 39 years old. Nothing blows as much as coming to the realization that you’re past the half-way point of the average natural life span of a human. I remember when I was a teen thinking ‘Holy crap, being over 30 is OLD.’. So, now I’m almost at 40. According to the younger me I have one foot in the grave and life is accelerating towards oblivion.

Keeping in mind that I’m writing this knowing that there’s a possibility that my trainer, Brandi, is going to read this I can honestly say “Sure, I can probably lose a pound or ten.” Over the past year/year and a half I’ve been hitting the gym and I’m really not sure why. My doctor thinks she knows why – high blood pressure, bad cholesterol and a predisposition to diabetes lead her list. Granted, those are all issues that we all probably have to contend with as we age. But therein lies the rub:

I thought getting older meant that I get to run down my body.

That’s the joy of adulthood, isn’t it? Left over pizza or an ice cream sandwich for breakfast, eating any weird thing sight with little regard for the effects on my body and a relatively sedentary lifestyle were all things that I was looking forward to in my declining years. Being a kid means being told to eat right and lead a healthy lifestyle. Subject yourself to eating X amount of carbs, Y amount of protein and Z amount of calories and your body will be strong and healthy when you get older.

Treat your body as if it were a temple, they say. Everyone else can call their body a temple, I’m fine with referring to mine as the funnel cake stand at a festival. This funnel cake stand is sometimes content sitting on the couch playing a video game while the dog lays with it’s head in my lap coveting the Cheeto that fell on my belly.

I thought this was the time in my life where my body could just go to shit! Who am I trying to impress?? Women?! HA! I think I’ve passed the age where I’d be attractive to anyone. I’m just a few years away from being the creepy old guy at the bar hanging out with the twenty-somethings. Maybe I’ll grow a ponytail.

So here I am, complaining about living a healthier lifestyle. I’m dragging my sorry ass to the gym about 5 days out of the week for voluntary torture. Lifting weights, hitting the heavy bag and speed bag, doing ab work and contorting my body in ways that really aren’t natural. I sweat, my muscles hurt and I’m tired; I exhaust myself both physically and mentally during my workouts.

Crap. I think I like it.

The ‘Oh’ Face. No Wonder We’re Programmed To Close Our Eyes.

You know, you can learn a lot from the movie ‘Office Space’: How to bilk your company out of thousands of dollars by skimming pennies a la Superman IV, where your stapler is, and how to beat the crap out of office equipment in slow motion set to a gangsta beat. It was also the first time I had heard of the ‘Oh face’…

The reason that I bring this lovely cinematic moment to light is because I stumbled upon boingboing.net’s post on Video of people watching porn, which pulls the basis of it’s story from a Wallpaper* article called “Immersion: Porn by Robbie Cooper“.

You might not want to watch that at work.

In a film of startling power and unsettling intimacy – produced exclusively for wallpaper.com – video artist and photographer Robbie Cooper shoots back at active porn aficionados lost in ecstatic release and hears how their passion developed. Be aware that this is not easy titillation and some of you may find the footage shocking. But the film does throw up any number of questions about voyeurism and exhibitionism and makes clear the incredible nakedness of the solo sex act.

When it comes down to it, the ‘oh face’ isn’t the most pleasant thing to look at and yet it is also intriguing. Think about it: There are websites dedicated to this expression such as Beautiful Agony [NSFW] which has the tag line “Facettes de la petite mort”, translated as “Faces of the small death”. According to WikiPedia

Beautiful Agony is an erotic website featuring head shots of user-submitted videos showing the participant having orgasms, without providing any visual description of what technique is being used or revealing anything below the neck and upper chest. Both men and women are featured on the site.

Which pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? You can’t really tell if the person is at the height of their pleasure or right at the moment of having a pot of boiling water poured on their crotch. What amazes me is that there’s also a paid member section to that site meaning that, yes, there are people who get their jollies seeing that particular moment.

Coincidentally, this juxtaposition of pleasure and pain reminded me of Nikolai Markus ‘Bushes’
http://designkitty.com/media/nikolai-markus-bushes-remix.flv

EDIT: I love the women at 1:05 and 3:19.
BTW, for an good read (and much more safe for work) you should check out Robbie Cooper’s other works on his website.. One of the most interesting is the ‘Immersion: Video Games’ series

• go to http://www.robbiecooper.org/
• click on Simulations
• click on Immersion
• on the lower right click ‘Photos’ and then play the video

It’s an absolutely fascinating look at the expressions that children make while watching video games. Makes you sort of want to tell them to go put on their play clothes and run around outside.

Almost Like A Poor Man’s “Cape Fear” Movie Theater Scene…

A conversation between me and Angela this morning…

Me: you know, I really enjoy being a dick
Angela: uh
Angela: really?
Me: oh, yeah
Me: went to the coffee shop
Me: was sitting there with my boss
Me: talking. chit chatting.
Me: there’s some event or some conference going on in the building
Me: and into the coffee shop comes about 8 people
Me: who decide to sit around two small tables and hold a meeting
Me: riiiiight next to us
Me: and one jackhole decides that, since he has a gadget, he’s going to use it
Me: so he breaks out his little Flip Minno and starts recording their meeting
Me: so people are talking and he’s swinging this shit around
Me: so I take out my phone and tell my boss “want to see something fun?”
Me: and I open the Notes application and I type
Me: “I like talking loud when people record in a public place”
Me: So I started talking loud.
Me: so far I think that guy has me recorded talking about our roof and our chimney
Me: email attachments
Me: and a few other trivial things, with a few curse words thrown in for good measure.
Me:
Angela: lol

Now, before anyone begins to call me a petty, juvenile asshat you have to take into account the building that we’re in: We’re in George Mason’s Johnson Center. The place has conference rooms, a food court, various desks, tables and chairs, and a number of other alcoves where these people could have met with some privacy. But, no. They decide to park it right next to me in a crowded and noisy coffee shop and have their discussion. And record it. They were pretty loud, too.

I told my boss, “Maybe I should have said ‘I have a bad case of rectal worms and I can’t sit still. Does this scab on my elbow smell like root beer to you?’”.

Donation Season. Duck Season. Donation Season.

It’s that time of the year. Heck, it’s already halfway through 2009. This year Angela and I are taking Jinx to the Walk to Cure Diabetes this Sunday, June 7th, 2009. Over a decade ago I took Farley with me on a charity fund raising walk called ‘Walking the Dog’ so I thought that it was a good time to bring our girl with us. So far we’ve collected half of our goal of $100 which isn’t too bad considering we only thought of doing this a little more than a week ago.

I’ll be honest with you: I hate raising money. I remember having to do it in high school for year book or the Student Council Association. We’d sell candy. That friggin’ sucked. I would sell whatever I had and then when I brought the cash in they’d give me more to sell. What the heck?! They’re trusting me to lug zip lock bags full of candy around school? It got to the point where I would either get tired of trying to sell it or I’d start snacking on the crack and I wound up buying a good portion of the M&M’s, Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups myself. I was horrible at fundraising. I still am.

I feel bad for all of you guys that have kids. Now it is no longer candy but wrapping paper, popcorn, cards, figurines, stationary, oranges and nuclear warheads.

So, here I am. Almost 40 and I look at what donations I’ve made recently.

• Angela’s company has a team for the Walk to Cure Diabetes
• Best Friends (regular donation)
• MAESSR (regular donation)
• My friend Tim is riding for the American Diabetes Association
• A former classmate of mine, Cynthia, is doing the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life
• And anything that my sister Mamie comes to me with, ranging from the Race for the Cure to school fundraisers, etc., etc.

It used to be that I only donated to animal charities. After my father passed away that changed. And I always make sure to take care of my nieces if they need anything fundraising help because I can testify about how painful it was not to meet your quotas when you were forced to do that in school. Yeah, I know all the tricks that people use to duck from people who are fundraising because I do it, too. Angela reminded me to keep receipts for all the places that I donate to. This is a first for me since I normally give money and then don’t think about it any longer.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t help out the Girl Scouts when they come around with their cookies…