In Your Face

Imagine this: you're driving down a road. It can be any road, a narrow, pockmarked country highway, a major four lane highway where everyone's going at least twelve miles above the speed limit, a residental road crammed with workers on their lunch breaks or any other road you can think of! There you are, just driving along, perhaps listenign to the radio, shifting in your seat because you feel those three hours of straight driving settling against you like a lumpy leaden jacket, or maybe you're talking to someone, glancing between them and the road. Your eye catches a billboard alongside the road, advertising something awaiting you at the end of the next off-ramp, or in the next town, or next city or even the next state. Maybe it catches your eye like a child's finger lightly tugs your shirt as he goes by, curious eyes emploring your own. Or maybe it's merely a blur in your peripheral vision, your mind barely giving it attention like a thin-lipped man deeply engrossed in the stock market numbers, his eyes flicking over his daughter's proudly held drawing, a low grunt the only acknowledgement of her masterpiece.

Then suddenly that billboard, that obscure advertisement boasting the same product to passersby since perhaps the business itself has been in business, or since the road had been placed there...is on your windshield! Your mind is startled from its numbing laundry machine spin cycle, it's thrown off balance by what lies before it. You feel it bouncing around up there, struggling to make sense, taking in the obtrusive excalmation points, the pointed finger, the raised brows, the adnormal amount of teeth filling your vision like a picket fence descending into the horizon, never ending. You pump the gas but the car doesn't slow, was there a hairpin turn up ahead? A hill, the exit I needed? It's no use, you can't remember. All you can think about is that advertisement boldly stepping over that carefully guarded threshold and into your personal space. That hallowed, painstakingly kept space like that vaccumm-lined, impeccably dusted and arranged room in your grandparent's house you couldn't enter even under a blood oath until you were of age. You step back, stumble over things, unsure of what to make of this thing plastered before you, demanding your attention, sucking it away from all avenues with its brilliant, too-bright colors, its obnoxious screaming words that make the voice in your head want to burst with the force of each letter, each exclamation, each claim made again and again and again...

Do you ever feel like this when you encounter one of those annoying pop-up ads when perusing an Internet site? There you are logging into facebook, or checking on song lyrics when it centers itself conveniently over what you were reading or looking at, instantly casting everything in the background to shadow so it stands solely in the spotlight, like a greedy child pushing others away, then waltzing to center stage, planting herself beneath the light and letting a malicious grin eat up her face. I'm sure I can safely speak for everyone when I say no one likes pop-ads such as those. What's the point of them? As if we're not annoyed enough by the blinking, flashing, sparkling, jittering, fluttering, flying, animated, chirping, boasting, screaming, pointing, demanding, offending nature of online advertisements already. Then they have to literally come half an inch from your face when you're just trying to get things done? No, I don't think so. I don't want an advertisement blowing up in my face, usually framing some ridiculous new fad some crazy-haired, black, horn-rimmed glasses donning freak came up with in his basement while his body has molded itself to his chair and his brain has molded itself to his rotting skull.

Okay, okay. I'm being cynical now. But seriously? Who came up with advertisements such as those? And who can conoct exactly the right formula for them to make them the most abrasive and annoying little pop-ups and boxes we've ever seen? Do they sit there and poke, prod and test people all day to see what gets them angered the most? Now I don't want to come off as angry in this blog post, mainly because I don't want this to turn into one big, rambling rant. I'm simply just trying to state my opinion, and I guess if it comes off a little rant-like than I guess I can accept it! Because I'm sure there are plenty of us out there who feel the same way.

Take Facebook for example. Within the last few months I've noticed a blatant change in the way they post advertisements to their site. When I first created an account almost a year ago there were only little advertisements along the righthand side of any page you happened to be on. Not only could you specify to Facebook what exactly you were looking for where ads were concerned, but you could also delete the one's you found offensive or had showed up too many times. As I've found out, it was too good to be true. Now there are ads at least three or four times bigger than the one's mentioned before, and guess what? You can't delete them! And they have proven to be some of the most annoying and vexing ads I've ever encountered online. One of them happens to show what they deem to be effective weight loss by showing a rather chubby woman in nothing but a bra and underwear from a side view, and the wa-la! miraculously skinny woman - who is supposed to be the same woman - shows her wearing even less! Her arms are crossed over her chest and she's wearing a thong.

The first time I saw that ad I was obviously repulsed. First of all, we can tell when someone has lost weight without half - or less than half - of their clothes being off. And secondly, I think I can safely bet that any weightloss product advertised in such a matter isn't going to gain much trust or interest from anyone. It's going to offend people, to make them refresh the page to expunge it into eternity. But unfortunately it will return, just like the ads boasting the question Is It Real Or Fake? and then proceeds to assault you with an off-the-wall picture like the man-dog or a premature kitten fitting in the palm of your hand or even the world's longest eyelashes? which shows what is obviously hair glued to a woman's eyelids. Who the hell concots this stuff on the Internet? Where is there brain during all of this? People of all ages come onto Facebook to reconnect with family, friends, collegues and co-workers alike. They come to play games, to relax, to catch up on the lives of people who lives hundreds or even thousands of miles away from them. They don't come to partake in mindless trivia who's answer is to obvious the question seems pathetically pointless. Yet there they are, snagging our attention like a fish hook in our brains, tugging, demanding, sinking deeper, thickening our blood until we feel like pounding our laptop in frustration.

When did online ads become so obnoxious like this? Like I said earlier Facebook ads were never this offensive or utterly indestructable. We, the users, used to have control over not only what type of ads we choose to appear on our profiles, but also what we didn't want to see. Now it's like the Wizard of Oz, some greater force sitting behind that familiar white backdrop, snickering, drooling, barely able to stay seated as our anger seethes and we look away in disgust at the ads he posts to his ever-rising glee upon our pages. Okay, okay, the cynical side is taking over. I think I'll derail this Facebook rant now. :)

Like always, this week's blog post is terribly long, but I do hope you're taking something valuable away from it. But I'm not quite done talking about online ads just yet! I wanted to slip in another site I frequent alongside Facebook, Pandora.com. For those of you unfamiliar Pandora is an Internet radio site where you can tailor-make radio stations that fit your personal music-tastes and unlike traditional radio, when a song comes up you don't like, you can banish it! Ah, the freedom. But wait! That freedom - like every other freedom - comes with a price. That price being randomly placed ads that jolt you from your smooth-sailing music enjoyment and collide with your ship like that mysterious ice berg tearing into the site of the Titanic. I know when listening to Pandora I usually venture onto other sites, usually Facebook or Oldhouses.com to peruse other things, all with the blissful backdrop of my favorite songs. But then an ad that's unnecessarily three-times louder than the music interupts the flow of the tide onto the beach, and I shrink back, scurrying off my towel as ice cold water nips at my toes and sun-warmed skin. The sky clouds over, chasing away the sun like a mother scooting her son's curious stare away from a crab, his claws clicking rhymically. Okay, I'll admit, it's not that bad. But it's annoying nonetheless. What's more vexing than these less than a minute ads are the full-page ones that attempt to load before a different station you clicked on starts playing. Just like any YouTube video, they have to buffer before playing smoothly, but while I was listening to Pandora yesterday I figured out that rarely happens. So there I am on another site, waiting for my station to start playing and all I hear are fragments of a cheerful woman or falsely-portrayed family harking some toxic chemical that doctors have deemed family-safe all while music almost as abrasive as what you hear on the radio these days plays in the background. Or attempts to play I should say. Met with the claim that your music will start playing in four seconds after a minute had passed I was forced to refresh the page....three different times.

Now granted this could be avoided by upgrading to Pandora One, which eliminates commericals, but that freedom comes with a price as well. Thirty dollars I believe. So now us Pandora users have to literally pay out of our wallets for the priviledge of enjoying smooth, enjoyable music listening with the annoyance of buffering, chirpy commericals butting in like that scowling fat kid in the lunch line? It shouldn't have to be that way. Everyone should be granted that priviledge regardless. Now I understand Pandora has to make a profit somewhere, and ads do help pay the bills - as they graciously remind us users - but I'm sure another way around it could be found. But, I've talked about Pandora enough. So again I will derail this train, and perhaps skip along the tracks in search of another one.

Talking about Pandora reminds me of the animated ads on Facebook I've encountered as of recent. Once again I was just doing something else on the site, perhaps commenting on a friend's status, writing my own, or playing a game when an instantly bothersome advertisement began attempting to play on my homepage. At first I couldn't figure out where it was coming from but then there it was! Smack-dab in the middle of the page, playing out in fragments as if I'm supposed to care enough to put together all those pieces and figure out what they're trying to tell me. No, I don't think so. I turned off the sound on my laptop and continued doing what I was doing. What's even worse was that is was an interactive commerical. Now I just view those as those games the teachers force all the high school students to partake in on the first day of school. Those events where freshman are thrown in with seniors and all are expected to hug and back-slap like they have more common-ground than happening to attend the same school. Why would company's think we'd risk clicking on an ad when we know it's going to take us somewhere dark and mysterious, some place where viruses or all those extinct and faded exclamation points you'd been avoiding on peeling billboards and ads pasted in storefront windows for years are crouched in the corners, waiting to strike for a second time, to maybe draw some blood.

There's a lot more I could talk about, and perhaps you've garnered that from the length of today's post. But honestly? It feels good to finally say my piece about the growing number of online advertisements boldly stepping beyond that threshold and pointing a finger, pressing into us, making us stumble backward, wondering how the moat around our personal space dried up and the big-bad world of advertising knocked down the door and took over our castles. If you're a Facebook user and are as frustrated as I am about the nature of their recent shift in how they present their ads, feel free to say your piece as well. I'm here to listen as much as I am to bitch...I mean rant...I mean, well hell, I'll do it all! :)

Do You Fit The Media Mold?

Look anywhere, and the pressures put upon girls and women of all ages not only in America but other countries as well are blatantly obvious. Stretched larger than life along the walls of stores like Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie and many others are skinny females wrapped tightly in glowing, perfectly tanned skin with shimmering hair radiating from their flawless faces like a pristine waterfall tumbling directly from a mountain's center, untainted by the world's deadly, poisonous touch. Their eyes stare at you half-shut, rimmed in make-up, eyelashes curving upward like delicate waves fanning out, catching sunlight that sparkles against your eye, holding your gaze long enough to draw your mind's eye inward, to compare yourself to the perfect image of the woman before you. And if you're anything like me, you'll know you don't measure up and turn away, shaking your head. Wondering what factory that woman on the wall was produced in, how many on the assembly line came before her? How many will come after?

When it comes to the media's definition of beauty in girls and women, there is an undeniable mold they think everyone should fall into and conform themselves to, like melting away our pride, our dignity, our self-respect, who we are, our individuality and allowing the melted wax of our former selves to fill up that mold until we harden against it, harden against the onslaught of the media and all its dark tentacles reaching out. Then the mold is being torn away, a new woman already sinking into it, and we become just like everyone else the media has reached out to and polished to a shine.

I've come to realize that the media plays a major role in many of the blog posts I write about each Wednesday. Most of the time it has to do with music and how the media is so negatively affecting it these days, but this time I have taken a different turn. But, you never know! Music may end up working itself back in anyway. Marilyn Monroe - if I recall correctly - was the first artificial blonde Hollywood presented to the world through movies. She was shaped into someone completely different, a doll, a perfect delicate plaster cast from the universal mold they could pop onstage and pluck the strings, ruling her every move, her every thought, and her appearances. Granted, I know next to nothing about Marilyn Monroe other than hearing snippets of stories over the years and watching Some Like It Hot on TV some years ago, but I do know she allowed Hollywood and all its far-reaching arms to primp and mold her, shaping her into a dazzling movie star that still tantalizes many actresses today...but in the end she was eventually ruined because of it.

There's the old saying beauty comes from within but honestly? Who really takes that to heart? Now don't get me wrong, it's every bit true. Like an online friend of mine said, you can have the most attractive features in the world, but if you aren't a good person on the inside, those good looks mean nothing. So why is the media presenting the complete opposite to us in its usual twisted way? Well, I said I wasn't going to insert a music metaphor here, but I'm simply following the narrow and rutted dirt path through the thick woods of my mind. Each corner is blind and could lead to anything, I just take everything as it comes!

Over the years media has done the same thing to music. Quantity has been placed as a higher priority than quality. People are demanding more and more music yet don't realize that like mixing tea, you can't make a whole gallon by just continually adding water, you have to double all the other ingredients to keep the tea's flavor from thinning out and eventually becoming insipid. Such is the case with today's music. But people no longer care about its distilled sound or even more distilled talent. You could apply the same theory to the world's view of what a beautiful woman is today. The more carbon copy women out there who adhere to this universal mold, the more satisfied people will be the celebrities they see on TV, advertisements and magazines.

Celebrities are another thing entirely. A couple weeks ago I was watching Entertainment Tonight, which I never watch for obvious reasons, but that night curiosity won me over so I decided to watch it anyway, and they presented a story of Terri Hatcher - I think that's her name, the actress from Desperate Housewives? - who had taken pictures of herself with not a trace of make-up on with wet hair and a towel wrapped around her middle in her bathroom and posted them on Twitter. The ET announcer went on to point out the ghastly wrinkles in Teri's forehead, and the wrinkles here, and the wrinkles there. I can't recall exactly what Teri herself was quoted as saying but it was something like "I'm not afraid to show who I really am. This is me, without make-up, and I'm proud to show these pictures to you." Even when celebrities strip off the thin, powder masks that make them glitter and shine beneath the lights and so many women's hearts rip with envy, I'm skeptical. Sure they look normal but would any celebrity really take it all off? Or is it just a marketing ploy? A way for themselves to appear on the same level with the average American woman watching their movies and TV shows? Maybe I'm being overly critical of celebrities in general, and I'll admit, I'm not much for movies and only watch a handful of TV shows a week, but I'm sure there are people out there that agree with me.

Perhaps my viewpoints come from, ironically, the media. Celebrities are touted so much by the media, their every moment captured and sent to millions of websites dedicated to such innocuous, every day occurrences as shopping for groceries, bringing their kids to the park, and eating lunch that we think they're something special for doing, when really they're just living their lives like we do, the only difference is that we don't have a talent for acting and haven't grown up in front of a camera like a weed grows up amidst its more beautiful counterparts. The media has placed celebrities on a pedestal, lashing out at them when they do anything imperfect. As much as I can't see it, they are normal people just like us. Yet why can't we get past their names? Their famous faces smiling, crying, laughing and screaming in our favorite movies? Why can't we tear ourselves away from the photos after photos of them hauling their kids, arguing with their wives/husbands? Is their really that much separating us from them apart from different careers and talents? And of course, money. Money in itself may be another underpinning of this whole thing, but I'll leave that to someone else!

Well I had intended to talk about how clothing these days - especially articles bought at major retail stores - seems to be sized and fitted for a very elite and specific type of woman, but ended up derailing on a rant about the ridiculousness of Hollywood, the over-inflated balloon of the media, and its swarming beehive of celebrities that lead normal - at least in most of the pictures plastered in websites by the salivating paparazzi - but portrayed as infinitely interesting lives. I guess you could say this rambling blog post was inspired by several summer tank-tops I've recently bought at American Eagle. Not only are the straps mysteriously a few inches too long, but my assets are never enough to fill out what apparently American Eagle has deemed as the normal amount. Well I'm sorry A.E, but not every girl between the ages of 16 and 20-something have the assets that you believe them too. Some girls are well-endowed, others aren't. Yet many major clothing stores - and minor ones too - seem to have a mysterious universal mold that they apply to every size of clothing, and leave women like me who struggle with missing parts of the mold and a way to make themselves fit said mold. Nothing is more frustrating than picking out that special piece of clothing that caught your eye, trying it on and finding that it doesn't fit. Celebrities, girls and women from every walk of life are criticized when they flaunt their curves and shapes, yet so many clothes these days lack such qualities.

I know I've never fit into any of these molds, and I'm okay with that. I don't wear make-up, my hair isn't always straight, I wear glasses, I refuse to wear those ridiculous shorts that look like the girl's ass to going to swallow them up at any time. I don't care for dressing up, I really don't like certain shades of pink, the same tank top may not look as good on me as someone else who fits the mold but I've accepted what God has given me. Isn't it time the media accepts the - gasp! - flaws in the celebrities it trails around like a black shadow skipping behind you on the sun-baked concrete? Maybe then we wouldn't have to scale the high bar every time we try on clothes, or walk in the mall, or turn on the TV. Maybe we can throw away the molds hovering overhead and make our own, one that fits only us, one that celebrates our individuality and the fact that women everywhere are no longer going to conform to anyones standards but their own. Don't get me started on the entertainment industry. :)

Wildflower's Dance

Perhaps as writer's nature inspires us all. But just as there are many sides to nature, so are there myriad ways in which we are inspired by it. Of course, it isn't just the writer who takes something away from this grand earth of ours. Everyone can gain from its beauty. From the photographer, to the musical director, to the singer/songwriter, to the painter, to the farmer, to the retired couple RVing across America to the toddler taking his first steps, grasping at anything that moves, watching a fluttering butterfly with rapt attention, seeing minuscule wonders we as adults inadvertently pass over, beauty lost in the rush of things.

Just as we each reflect upon and feel inspired by nature's beauty in different ways, so can we learn so many things from each other's point of view. Take the toddler's view for instance. A butterfly slowly folding and unfolding its wings on a wilting wildflower beneath a glaring, unblinking sun is a pretty sight to anyone but to a young child just beginning to turn the pages of nature, watching with infectious giggle and spit-streaked lips stretching wide in a grin that instantly becomes your own that butterfly is a world within itself. Colors fitting perfectly together on delicate wings, like paper-thin mosaics designed and set by hands more delicate than a mask of cobwebs shielding belongings beneath an attic's eves, fending off time even though time has deftly woven them there. He may reach out, chubby fingers unsteady, eyes reflecting the wonder before him, his mind reaching out along with his hand, yearning to understand, yearning to touch, to feel.

Whenever I'm a photographing mood I like to get down to the ground and see what I'm missing. Granted I stand a measly five foot two so needless to say I'm pretty close to the ground already, but I mean actually flattening yourself along the ground, aiming the camera up at something, rather than down. Nature is like a thick, worn book on a table. The ends of each page may be ragged and curling in all directions like a bad 80's layered cut or an even worse perm but that pockmarked surface just begs for you to reach out doesn't it? To reach out and fold back the pages, wondering if the rest of them are as peeled as the edges. Your eyes may travel to words upon the pages, faded and smudged into the slowly dissolving material of the paper itself. As if as it ages the book itself is digesting the words which birthed it, perhaps trying to claim its own identity, acknowledging the fact that it will most likely remain on this table which never gets dusted, for just like the table, it will never feel the weight of purpose. Their only purpose now is to reflect the passage of time with a steady sprinkling of dust, like rotten confectioner's sugar sprinkled atop a lumpy, fuzz-cloaked cake.

But before I go off on yet another simile gone crazy, let me get back to the point. Just as we should all yearn to discover nature from all angles, so can we learn from each other's point of view. Being interested in photography myself, which rekindled itself a few years ago thanks to my cousin living in Upper Michigan and her penchant for taking winter pictures, I began thinking of our own personal interests in photography when it comes to nature.

As I mentioned before, my cousin loves taking winter pictures. Now being from the U.P one would assume this to be natural seeing as that part of the Midwest receives more than their far share of snow! But she's told me that isn't the whole story. She loves winter because of its inimitable beauty. For its unending cloak of white tossed haphazardly or delicately upon the land, for the way mighty pines bend and sag beneath their fluffy bonnets of white, for the roads marred with browns and blacks only to have a fresh coat obscure man's stigma like a mother hastily bleaching a child's white shirt, desperate to see the stain gone.

Living in Wisconsin we get our fair share of snow as well, though not nearly as much as in previous winters. And I'll admit, living here in the city I don't appreciate winter like I do when I'm out in the countryside. There what looks like a mere square of white cloth sewn and cut to precise measurements in our neighbor's backyards and on their roofs become blankets that meld with the earth's gentle slopes and subtle rises and valleys. It melds uninterrupted with the pale sky above, straight lines of barren trees and snow-burdened pines like tightly sewn seams tying together this blanket white. Hoar frost is what really fascinates me. Everything is encased in a transparent jacket, as if someone had meant to shield nature from something but ended up shrink-wrapping it instead. Trees creak within their cages, perhaps viewing the world through blurry panes of glass like an old house staring at the world through the wavy panes of its windows. Streets and country roads become slick ribbons of silk, rivers rush gaily underneath their shields, a world ignorant of the frozen atmosphere beyond.

Also, when out in the countryside I love the crunch of snow underneath my boots. I love breaking through that crusty layer of snow on top and feeling my entire body sink into the real confectioner's sugar underneath, that sweet layer of frosting hidden below the hardened top, itching to dig into your teeth and dance with your taste buds. I love the way snow falls from a tree when you shake it, those whispers in a thousand voices raining down upon you, white snow saved just for you, snowflakes caught between your eyelashes, their beautiful intricacies melting away. I love the way a heavy snowfall looks from the safety of my house. The way the world is pushed back and a constantly shifting mosaic of hypnotic snow cascades in every direction, a thousand lungs expelling their breath upon the world, each melding with the other, dancing before you, luring you into a trance, into their depths until you feel like you are clinging to the curved edge of a glass globe and the hand shaking it is ignorant of your confusion, ignorant of anything but the blissful blizzard swirling within and the music playing as long as the handle turns and time is left to use at his whimsy.

Well there you go, it's the middle of summer and I'm talking about winter. Honestly, I'm more excited for fall. A couple weeks ago Sheboygan's experienced fall like weather and I felt my heart skipping in front of me, beckoning me to come find fall, come seek it out. I was anxious for the trees to turn, shedding their uniform green coats and donning their cheerfully colored cloaks of rusty reds and aged browns, golden yellows and flaming oranges. I yearned for that blissfully warm cup of apple cider to fill me in every corner and crevice, for that apple fresh from the orchard to break between my teeth, for its succulent flesh to burst upon my tongue like a dam unable to hold back its wealth. But most of all I yearn for those silent walks through the forests with color raining down around me and layering the ground below, as if two quilts woven with every shade of fall were on a clothes line billowing in the wind, each time sending forth another square spinning wildly in the wind, until they tangled with one another, snagging in the trees, sticking to the ground where they were sewn deftly together by the creator's hand, a thick blanket upon the earth, a cheerful welcome mat for winter to begin its descent from the mountain tops and from the very bellies of faraway valleys.

Just as each of us gravitates towards different aspects of nature that we draw inspiration from, so do we each like a different season. Granted we probably like all of them, but we may like a certain one for a particular reason. Through my cousin's passion for winter in the U.P and her excitement to capture its beauty I have come to respect winter and begin to pay more attention to the beauty she so often displays in her photo's. Just as I'm sure she has come to appreciate flowers and the beach due to my penchant for photographing them. I never got to talking about flowers did I? As you may have noticed from today's blog post title, I had indeed intended to talk about my passion for flowers, of all kinds. But, like always, that is for another time. My habit of writing whatever comes to mind has once again rudely shoved what I had intended to write about out of the way, like a petulant child shoving his younger sister out of the computer chair, then with a wild grin going on her facebook page and proceeding to reek havoc. Thank God my brother isn't like that!

Anyway, I intend to post pictures of the flowers I have photographed onto my blog, and perhaps sometime get around to talking about why I love them so much. But until then, to all you photographers out there, whether you be a person with a basic digital camera just following your passion or whimsy - like me - or a professional, traveling photographer capturing your passion on film every day - and to you people may I just say you're living a dream of mine! - happy photographing!