Stuper Size Me

I drove up to Tennessee to shoot some of my portraits. While I was up there I found out that one of my rear tires was flat. As I was watching my dad raise the car up with a jack it blew me away watching that little jack lift up a car. I already knew that a jack could lift a car because, that is what they are for, but it is a different experience when you actually see it. It made me think about how we associate size with power. The bigger is better perception within our culture is the root of most of the inefficiencies in our society. The popular big SUVs that are much larger vehicles than most people need are also gas-guzzlers. The average SUV gets about 10 to 15 miles to the gallon whereas their small counterparts get 30 to 40. The traditional desire to own a big house has drawn a lot of people working in the city to move out into the suburbs, which causes a lot of the traffic. The traffic in turn wastes hours of the time of many, causes accidents which raise insurance costs, destroys the environment and encourages a sedentary lifestyle. The increased commuting also takes time away from cooking and family time; precipitating an unhealthy diet and relational dynamic. The bigger is better paradigm in a lot of ways drives our economy, but it also puts a lot of people in serious debt. It leads people to buy houses much bigger than they can afford. People also spend thousands of dollars on bigger and better Televisions and other electronics; they keep coming out with newer and better ones it doesn’t stop. You’ve got flat screen TV, well is it plasma? Oh you have a plasma TV, well have you seen my HD. That’s a nice DVD collection you’ve got there; you should come over sometime and check out my blue rays. That’s a nice Satellite do you get HBO 439,847,000 or ESPN 284,019? No, I only get HBO 1 through HBO 230,934. Do you get MTV 233,999 and if so do they play music videos? Give me a call on my cell sometime I’ve got 9,000,000 anytime minutes and free nights and weekends. Does your phone burn DVDs? No, mine is a little older it only grooves records. No matter how big the car is the little jack can lift it. No matter how big the house is you can’t get in without a small key. Even a giant ship is directed by a tiny rudder.

Those were the weird old days

So I am wondering through this antique flea market looking for something nostalgic like a rotary phone or a typewriter.  I couldn’t find any that fit my budget and I almost walked out of the store with nothing but, as I was exiting I saw an ashtray set from Mobel’s WhoreHouse in Las Vegas.  I knew I had to buy it, but this is very strange to me because, I don’t believe in prostitution and would not go to a whorehouse.  For some reason the uniqueness of the item was so compelling that I was driven to overcome my reluctances.  I think was the fact that it was branded with a logo and everything.  What would you do if you saw a shirt that read “my friend got high at Ted’s Crack House and all I got was this lousy T shirt?  Now to set up a still life for this particular item I had to do something that I had never done before; I had to buy a bra.  As awkward as it was I think that shopping for the bra was even more awkward than actually buying it.   However it would have been really nice if they had a self-checkout line.   This was only the beginning of the awkwardness.  I began searching Craig’s List for nostalgic items.  I found a couple of ads for an old typewriter.  One ad wanted thirty dollars and the other wanted one-dollar.  So naturally I wrote the one-dollar person first, but when I checked with them about the price just to make sure before I drove to their place they informed that they wanted thirty dollars.  I assumed that I had accidently written the wrong seller.  I discovered that the two different ads had different seller names and prices but the same address and photo of the typewriter.  Not only did they have different seller names they also had different stories as to why they were selling the same typewriter.  One was selling junk they did not want and the other selling collectables.  I decided to call them on their rouse.  I took screen shots of both ads and put them together in photoshop and attached them to my reply to their request for thirty dollars; my reply read “thirty is a little much for me.  I could go as high as fifteen however I am curious as to why you have two entirely different ads for the same typewriter.”  Needless to say I did not receive a response from them after that.  I also found some old glasses on Craig’s List.  I made arrangements to buy them from the seller and was about to make my first trip to Paulding county.  First I had to swing by the atm to get some cash; then I pulled into some empty spaces in the Wachovia parking lot to enter the address in my GPS.  Unfortunately their address was not recognized by my GPS,  so I was fiddling with it while listening to my buddy Pete who I was on the phone with tell me about his worm farm.  All of the sudden I look up and there is a guy about fifty feet directly in front of me with a long lense taking pictures of me.  So, I got off the phone, put my GPS down, put the car in drive, and got out of there.   Well, you will be happy to know that I got those glasses, Pete was able to order the worms he needed, I was able to borrow a typewriter from Paris on Ponce, and my brother got over his cold, which has nothing to do with any of this except that I found out today.  I hope that you have enjoyed our time together today; till next time ta ta.

If you're happy and you know it scratch your head

Do you want to be happy?  Is that not the stupidest question ever asked?  Sometimes it doesn’t even seem to be a choice.  Relax this isn’t some melancholy diatribe.  I don’t usually spend much time thinking about the topic of happiness, because I believe that it is more of a perspective and a little bit of a by product from wise choices and humility.  However, yesterday I was browsing in Binders while waiting for a friend to finish shopping when I stumbled across these how to draw books.  One of the books was titled “How to Draw Stupid Characters”.  The character on the front of the book was this guy with a big smile on his face.  I started to wonder why do we associate happy people with stupidity.   All of the dumb characters in cartoons are also the happiest.  Some of those would be: Goofy, Odie, Homer, Peter Griffin, Barney Rubble,  Sultan from Aladdin and Dopey.  Some of the dumb happy tv characters include: Joey(friends), Kelly(married with children), Woody (cheers), Rose (Golden Girls), Bull (Night Court) and Corky (Murphy Brown).   What I find even more interesting is that the smartest characters are often the most downcast and cynical.  Some cartoon examples include: Lisa(Simpsons), Brian(The Family Guy), Garfield, Stewie(Family Guy) and Kyle(South Park).  Obviously TV and real life are two different things so, I thought about it from a real life perspective.   If I saw two people one was really happy and perky and the other kept a serious look on their face and didn’t say much, but rather just looked intently.  What conclusions would a draw about those two individuals?  I would probably expect the perky person to be easy to get to know and probably fun to hang out with but, I would not expect them to be as smart as their somber counter part.    Why is that?   Shouldn’t the smarter person be happier?   Are happy people being misrepresented and misjudged?  Happy people are however usually more successful.  But are they happy because they are successful or are they successful because they are happy?  In every presidential election I have witnessed the happier candidate won.   Or is it all just a façade?  Are they just better at appearing happy?   Do people hire you based on your qualifications or on what they think it would be like to spend 9 hours a day with you?