Myspace Angles

Back in the day, Myspace was all the rage. Everyone had a page and there was a race to see how many “friends” you could get on there. One of the things that influenced your friend count was your picture…you always wanted to have a good Myspace profile picture. You had to get the right angles that made you look best, yet still looked casual and fun.

The way to get these pictures just right was to take the picture from above with from about 45 degrees off-center. The person in the photo usually looks out of the corner of their eyes and smiles so as to stretch the muscles and tendons in the neck…emphasizing the bones, and, well, not your fat neck.

I took a trip to Michigan and Chicago a few years back with my family. My sisters and I were hitting the tourist bars near Wrigley Field, and we all took fun Myspace pictures…mine turned out pretty legendary, this is what I looked like:



As I look at it, I realize that I probably don’t need to hide my identity…one because I know all my readers personally, and two (and most importantly), my face and neck are more mutated than the ninja turtles that I’m pretty much unrecognizable. One of the best things my wife has taught me is that a good argument tends to have 2 points…well she didn’t exactly teach me that…she’s just better at arguing than I am and her arguments ALWAYS have two points.

“The cats are wayyyyy better than the dog. One, because they’re cleaner and TWO, the dog sucks.”

Anyway…why have I gone through all this trouble and posted a ridiculous picture of myself? Well, PS had another wreck-less driving experience recently. I saw this delivery truck on my way to work and I thought it was funny enough by itself…my first few attempts to capture the image didn’t go very well…too far away, too blurry, you name it…yes I took probably 5-6 shots before deciding to drive up alongside the truck (stroke of genius AND pure luck, if you ask me).

I was a good driver and kept my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, but I aimed my phone at what I hoped would be the right angle to get what I was after…this my friends was my albatross that morning. Turned out, the angle made the picture funnier than it was originally…much like the properly snapped Myspace picture will make an otherwise homely, overweight, and generally unattractive person look more appealing.



Pepe actually puts produce in your tacos...but I got the good Myspace angle on it! So even though it is significantly less appetizing thinking about Pepe dropping fresh duce in your taco, it's funnier, and more attractive to me.

Always check your angles!

PS

Coming Strrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraight At’cha

Okay, I can barely stand this…this…this…WAITING!

The image you will see below I came across very recently, on a leisurely, pleasant walk with my family.

I was so blown away by the inappropriateness of this…this…this…abomination (that’s a bit strong, but c’mon, I’m selling it pretty well, right?) that I couldn’t keep it to myself for long.

I’ve been into ridiculous image collection for a long time now. Some of the ones that have graced this page are quite old…some are borrowed, some are new…and they all make you blue…with laughter! I realize I’m reaching there, but I just got married and I still have wedding stuff on the old brain-hole.

So put yourself in my shoes: You, your significant other, your innocent dog, are taking a long, beautiful walk through picturesque (great word choice, if I don’t say so myself) San Diego when all of a sudden…(and yes, people, it’s all of ‘a’ sudden, not all of ‘the’ sudden, remember I suck as spelling and blogging, but cliché IS me, so get it right)…

Where was I? Oh yeah…I was on a diatribe about “a sudden” vs “the sudden” and we all had a great time…

Jesus, this is taking a while…

And speaking of Jesus…someone cover his eyes, because he shouldn’t see this…










Good luck, and Godspeed…us away from stuff like this!





PS

First Ever Sneak Peek

I can barely keep this one under wraps. From the second I saw this, I wanted to publish...but I'm attempting to keep some semblance of comedic timing and what not...but I just had to sneak peek this.

This entry is going to be SO good...

I can't stress this enough.

This entry will blow your mind. The level of inappropriateness that is all over the rest of this photo will shock you. SHOCK I say.

Some key words that will serve as hints to highlight just how bad this photo will be:

Christian Science
Statue
Fountain
Children

You'll see it soon...

 

PS

I'll Show You Bored!

Earthquakes feel different after you get married. I’ve lived in southern California my whole life, so I’ve experienced my fair share of the old shake shakes (that’s what we all call them here), but the one that we just had today felt different. Not in that they shake differently like the type of shaking from a thrust fault versus a transform, strike-slip fault, but it feels different when you got a little more on the line when the world starts giving you the old shake shakes, you know?

I’ve talked before about just how fast information moves on the internet. Today, that was mostly a good thing. Celebrity twitter and facebook friend updates about the earthquake aside, it was nice to be able to go online and find out what was happening really quickly. I learned another fact in that process: people be freakin’ stupid, yo!

I’m not kidding. Go to ANY news website and read just about ANY article…skim down to the comment section and see democracy at work. More and more I see why we have a republic, not a pure democracy. When you let everyone sound off, you get a whole lot of ridiculous crap. You know that old adage: Opinions are like assholes…



Do we really need to sound off on the emotions we are experiencing as readers of a story? And even if we do need to allow for such things…and that is a HUGE if…but IF we are to allow them, lets explore the emotions chosen by the readers. Intrigued? Sure. I can get behind that. Sad? Definitely. It’s a huge quake that probably did some serious damage in Mexico…but only 9% feel this way? Thrilled I MIGHT be able to understand, like I think it’s in the neighborhood of the emotion that people might be feeling, but it’s still wrong…but Furious? Bored? Laughing?

Lets get it together, huh?



PS

Just Stopping By

Thought I’d pop in real quick to say…




See you soon!



PS

Excavation

I've hinted at it in several other entries, but I feel like I need to open myself up and be perfectly honest here: I watch Friends. I don't just watch it a little, I watch it all the time. I used to watch it when I was a kid because my Mom liked it. I began watching the reruns due to my wife's obsession with sitcoms, but I realized something in that process: I really like it. Sweet Zombie Jesus that feels good to say! I am liberated!

I think the mark of a good sitcom is the abilities of the writers and actors to create characters so versatile and complex that any viewer watching could see themselves in any number of them.

Side note: A sitcom that accomplishes this task brilliantly is Modern Family. Amazing show and one I will very likely reference again.

Okay, back to Friends. For me, I've been compared to Rachel for my occasional airheadedness and the fact that my nipples often poke through my shirts, to Monica for my reaction to stress and because that one time I had a bit too much to drink and hooked up with my best friend who I ended up marrying, to Phoebe for my creativity (seriously reaching there, but stick with me, I’m going somewhere…I think), to Joey for my prowess with the ladies (pause for several minutes for my friends to collectively laugh at me and catch their breath), to Chandler for my actual prowess with the ladies…and the fact that I married someone WAY out of my league, and Ross for his compulsive need to be right and his love of all things science.

Ross, for those who have been living under centuries of sedimentary rock, is a Palentologist. He has been known to collect dinosaur figurines and have crazy debates about evolution. I’ve already done my evolution debate on here, need I remind you of the cactus?

http://morepointlessstories.blogspot.com/2010/02/never-on-sunday.html

But I thought I would share a little about me today. Like Ross, I too love dinosaurs…but for me, it’s a particular dinosaur…and no, I’m not going to post a picture of someone doing something inappropriate with the dinosaur statues out by Palm Springs…but I’ll keep that in mind for later.

No, THIS is my dinosaur.




I’m kind of into photography. I took a class or two in high school but followed a different path once I hit college. I have now been back into photography for a few years now and my dinosaur helped facilitate that hobby. This is a Gateway Inc. DC-M50. As far as digital cameras go, this isn’t a very good one. It’s big, it’s heavy, has a small screen (and an inexplicably redundant old-school view finder), a mediocre zoom, and a blah lens. It’s bad in low-light situations, it uses power very inefficiently from 4 AAA batteries…even when I spent the extra $ on those fancy lithium ones. Rechargeable batteries are a joke, by the way. Not the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries you find in your cell phones or in better cameras than this one.








Batteries aside as well as camera quality and my strange need for my gadgets to be the best of the best…this camera has been VERY good to me. How can I fault anything that gave me such a fun hobby? I really can’t.

Though the recent acquisition of new post-processing photo software (that and some actual, real-life time) has led me to do some cool stuff with my old photos, my Zen-like and truly mindful moment comes in the click of the camera…be it the fake sound that emanates from point-and-shoot cameras like Dino or from the actual click of the shutter in my fancier (read: but still on the cheap) digital single lens reflex camera. Finding that image in my viewfinder that is at that exact instant perfect and hearing and feeling the click is where you can find my happy place.









And while the Beeper King might tell you that technology is cyclical, we all know that it only keeps getting better. The camera that I used to take these photos is old relative to the DSLRs that are available today. If you look closely at some of these pictures you can see a bit of grain or “noise” in a couple of them…that happens with my current camera at high ISO speeds. I would never have discovered what the heck ISO noise was if it weren’t for my dinosaur.

If it weren’t for my dinosaur, I wouldn’t have taken shots like this.



It was foggy and on pretty much raining when I took this shot. My friends had all walked away as I laid down on the ground and aimed my camera just so to get this. I eventually caught up with them and this picture is framed and hanging in my house. Lots of people take shots like this when they visit Paris, but this one is mine and I’m really proud of it.



This is my friend Colin. This was taken the day he graduated from college. His dad brought cigars and Colin delivered the valedictory address at his graduation ceremony. We heckled him from the stands, but we meant well and were really proud of him.



You can’t take a bad picture in Venice. You look around and there are beautifully composed pictures just waiting for you to snap, you just have to point – and – shoot (see what I did there?)



With that, dear friends, I must be signing off. Microsoft Word has now stretched this out onto a 3rd page and I’m beginning to feel like this pointless story is dragging out a bit too long.




And just so that I can stick with my unofficial rule to always share something silly from my world with you, here is evidence that my habit goes WAY back…also, I took this picture with Dino.





PS

Woodbridge High School Football Sucks

Kids are awful.

Well that’s a little strong…but I had to get your attention somehow.

This is going to come off a little back-in-my-dayish, but the circles I’m going to talk you in and the tangents we’re going to take together are well worth it.

Allow me to start you off with a little appetizer of what I’m getting at here:



Funny story about the above picture. I uploaded this to facebook and as a joke, I tagged my friend Scott in the photo. He promptly removed the tag from this picture. I sure showed him, didn’t I?

I was late to join the facebook craze. I had a myspace page like everyone and as facebook became more and more popular I was hesitant to join. I thought to myself, “I don’t get it.” It took my wife sitting me down in front of the screen to finally join.

To my surprise, I really liked facebooking. I put a facebook app on my blackberry (I’m very into gadgets, so this appealed to me greatly. Seriously, you’d be hard pressed to find me without a gadget of some kind in my hands…it’s why I’m able to get the pictures for this blog). On a quick side note for evidence, I was attempting to snap a picture today of a license plate. It wasn’t particularly funny or anything, but I thought my family would like it because it said “ZADIE.” It’s Yiddish for ‘grandfather’ and it’s what we called my dad’s dad. I was a little bummed I couldn’t snap the picture…but it reminded me of the following story about him.

When Zadie would send me birthday cards, he would do so on stationary that appeared have Hebrew writing on the top, with Moses holding two tablets beside it. When you looked a little closer, the stationary actually read “Hey Schmuck.” He would have liked this kid:



I can’t take credit for that picture. I grabbed it from a site I follow http://strikegently.com/.

A little while back, I mentioned http://www.lamebook.com/…something I learned about myself when I clicked through hundreds of pages (and, of course, added it to my reader, seriously, why don’t you have this yet??) Anyway the thing I leaned was how thankful that facebook wasn’t around when I was in junior high or high school. Information moved fast enough back then…could you imagine information moving any faster? I want to make an information superhighway reference here, but I can’t really think of one. Plus, it seems like you need to learn a whole new language…and when I was in high school, I was too busy scraping by in Spanish to learn another language.

One of the things you learn (both in high school and on lamebook), though, is that kids can be really cruel. Like REALLY cruel.

Can’t…stop…the…tangent…

I used to run cross country and track during my time in high school. At my school, these sports were the bottom of the social totem pole…even though our football team sucked out loud. Well one day during my freshman year I was warming up around the track and about 50 yards away was this dude that was friends with one of my friends. He had finished his football workout (he sucked out loud too, never made varsity…no, I’m not bitter). He looked at me with this shit eating grin as the distance between us closed. Then, without warning, he hit me and I fell to the track. Your boy PS was pretty embarrassed, a little dirty, and was bleeding because the cheap dirt track we had at my school contained many rocks…but to look at the positive in the situation…dude was laughing pretty hard…

Do you believe me yet about how mean kids can be? Here’s an example of how mean kids can be.




Back in my day we used to just throw taco sauce on people’s cars…and by “people’s” you should read “my” and by “we” you should read “they.”


With my positive self-image well-intact, I’ll sign off.

PS

MPS: There’s a story here in a picture I didn’t take. When I was making the left turn onto my street, a car with writing on the window caught my eye, but it wasn’t the one pictured above, but it was at the same house. That car window also had an “I ♥” on it…but it was followed, of course, with the classiest of classy statements: “UR MOM’S BOOBS.”