14 July 2008

words and pictures

Thanks to the magic of teh interwebs, old friends have been popping up all over the place lately. People I haven't heard from in eight years - and whom I basically only knew for a few days that long ago - have tracked me down via Facebook. Internet friends who vanished into the mists of time when they stopped blogging have emailed, and old friends I've known in real life but lost touch with due to my extreme laziness (and my tendency to live deep inside my own head - a dark and scary place, to be sure) have also made themselves known.

Since none of these renewed contacts has requested paternity tests or large transfers of funds to their bank accounts, I fully intend to respond to every one of them, but the problem is, I suck at staying in touch. Really, really suck at it.

Oh, sure, I start out with the best of intentions, figuring I'll just sit down in a quiet moment so I can focus my thoughts and write something really personal and meaningful, but come on. Seriously. Quiet moment = nap time. And it's hard to be personal and meaningful when you're groggy after waking up from a short nap. Besides, you aren't supposed to write personal emails at work, especially when you've just spent the last 20 minutes napping. Work really frowns on that sort of behavior.

I will, though. I will write to all these friends on several continents, and I will ask them about their lives and will tell them everything that's going on in my life.

Or they can just look here, the lazy fuckers.

One of the people who wrote to me sent some pictures she unearthed from the past, which made me realize that although I may not have always been a raving idiot, I certainly have been one for at least the past 10 years. Witness:

This is me (in my giant round glasses, thank you very much) parked on some parking meters in Madison, Wisconsin. Why this seemed like a photo opportunity left my memory long ago, but there it is. Me, sitting on some parking meters, random shopping bags in hand. I can't seem to ever take a normal photo... it always has to be cheesy.

And then there's the one above. We found some vomit on a stair as we were leaving the parking meters, and for whatever reason decided that it needed to be documented for future generations. But you can't just take a picture of puke - no, you need a photo that tells a story. So here I am, playing the part of Ralph, the puker. Dork.

This third picture was taken in Chicago. We found a beer bottle in the street and decided that it was no ordinary beer bottle, but a divine prop sent to us by God Himself, and that the only reasonable course of action was for me to lie down in the filthy gutter clutching the bottle and act dead. So I did.

The tendency to take ridiculous photos has not changed in the intervening years, either. The photo below was snapped in January, in France, when Zeeba and I had only been together for about a month:

The setting was some ancient French castle I can't be bothered to remember the name of. I was precariously balanced on the wall, while Zeeba stood behind me preparing to bludgeon me with a large stone. And why? Because the stone was there... and why not? It makes a nice picture story.

Kind of like the picture in the graveyard. Sure, I took a good many photos of headstones and the like, but to get across the idea of death, you can't beat melodrama!

There is no excuse for this next picture, which was taken in front of the Mediterranean near the Jean Cocteau Museum. It was just a random act of silliness.

So there you have it. First it was just me... then it was me and Zeeba... and then there were four of us striking silly poses. That's exponential. The madness - it spreads!

Who's next?

The Last Five:
I heard it on the radio - 27 July 2008
Happiness is... - 26 July 2008
Do bears shit in the woods? - 21 July 2008
Politics schmoliticks - 14 July 2008
words and pictures - 14 July 2008

words and pictures

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