Happy prances through a field of grass...

(That's what I would title the above picture)
Work by High Modernist architect Charles Gwathmey

Food for Thought

"Immerse people in universal and extreme situations which leave them only a couple of ways out, arrange things so that in choosing the way out they choose themselves, and you've won--the play is good." Jean Paul Sartre, Sartre on Theather

La Prensa Amarilla

yellow journalism (is defined) in terms of five characteristics:

* scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news

Image via CrunchBase

* lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
* use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudo-science, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
* emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips (which is now normal in the U.S.)
* dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

(Wikipedia)

Yahoo News, anyone?!?

I hate myself everytime I click on the headlines of Yahoo "News" ~ So misleading, so cheap, like reading the gossip magazines while waiting at the check out line...

I'm tempted not to, but what if I miss something juicy.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It's like watching Court T.V or CNN Headline News.

McDonald's for the mind...

Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

I love the vision these words conjure.

I think I suffer from the Eternal Darkness of the Spotted Mind.
And wonder how it would be to experience The Incredible Lightness of Being. Just being...
Words are heavy, thoughts are heavy.

Living in the moment. Such a fleeting thing!

Enjoying each sentence as it unfolds. Without anticipating the end and enduring the inevitable disappointment when the paragraph closes without warning.

35 mm film photography

Remember when cameras used to look like this?
And film was the medium instead of memory sticks?

(I feel like a relic when I reminisce about stuff that is so obsolete now a days that it seems like an feigned memory rather than something real.)

Like when I get the urge to go on the hunt for a blue Smith-Corona typewriter.
Not the kind that plugs into an outlet. The kind with winding ribbon and keys that are hard to hit; but make that addicting tick-tick sound...


Nostalgia.

I've been wanting a "big girl's" camera for a while now.

I have a camera now.
It's quite adorable, portable and pink. It fits in most pockets and it's quite fashionable. I don't even have to compromise between it and my make up bag when I am choosing things to put in my purse!

It perfectly suits most "social snapping" situations.
But it sucks at landscapes. Night landscapes are an infinite mass of blackness, no matter how hard I try. Or how slow I set the shutter speed. *sigh*

As a child, my parents had a leather bag filled with all things photography. A good camera, a tripod and a bunch of filters.
We were lucky in that we got to visit to exotic locales. And they snapped the most breathtaking pictures I could imagine.

I attached so many memories of...life to those pictures. To capturing a moment so special and unique that it had to be immortalized in a photograph.

The digital craze was decades away.
There was no instant way of knowing the end result. So you'd strive to capture the best with every shot.
And if unsure, tried again, again and again.

Only much later did the printed images show. Sometimes a week or more after walking through clouds in the mountains or jumping waves at a virgin beach.
Then the memories unraveled again, with the taste of saltwater or the chill of a temperate climate.
Life is sweeter through the lens of a 35 mm camera.

I'm still unsure, however, if I am ready to commit to a new hobby. Or I am simply enamored by the idea of looking through life through rose colored glasses.

from The Little Prince

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" "Does he collect butterflies?"

They ask: "How old is he?" "How many brothers does he have?""How much does he weigh?" "How much money does his father make?"

Only then do they think they know him.

Image via Wikipedia

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Trivial: Rock Band for Wii

My newest interest is a game for the Wii console called Rock Band 2. It's an interactive video game that allows multiple user set up a band and play guitar, base, drums and sing. It is set up in different levels of difficulty. The game comes with over 100 rock songs.

I'm totally shocked that I actually like this game because I am very much musically challenged: I am pretty much tone deaf, have no rhythm AND I don't really care for rock music (*collective gasp*, I know) EXCEPT for System of a Down (the greatest band ever!)

OK, so save for Serge and the gang and a handful of popular rock songs, I don't care for the genre.

BUT I love this game.

I turns out I'm no good at the guitar. The drums are an impossibility! The lack of rhythm and coordination have something to do with that, I'm sure.

But I love singing!!!

I never, ever sing ~ outside the comfort of my double glass paneled, ultra-noise cancelling car, that is.

Until now!!!

I still suck. Don't get me wrong.

But due to an unforeseen turn of event (it's like "a break in the Matrix" or something) I turn out to be quite the gifted singer of the Chili Peppers Song "Give it Away"

I am shocked. And delighted. Shocked because, well: I've never been able to sing along to songs on the radio.

I can't follow the lyrics. (I blame this on my "English as second language" handicap) and I never really cared for the Chili Peppers.

But suddenly I'm transformed into someone who is good at something musical and happens to be a video game.

I can't wait to go back to Massachusetts and show off my mad skillzzz to the ones that introduced me to this game!

Watch out, I'm quite a Rock Star! and modest, as well :P