Someone wrote:
Most of the time information was lost for a reason; in the case of most of
the photos with people's faces, the sharpening effect is not flattering to
their complexions .....
Check out http://(redacted)

It's a photo of I took of myself [...] To counter the waxy
smoothness of the smoothening filter, I used the film grain filter. I
think it helps. Once again, more information lost (colour, and there's
added noise) but ironically it looks better.
It's a picture that would fit real nice in Pleasantville.
OK, you've just walked into a Stephen rant.  Don't bother taking this personally. It's not a personal thing. It's a societal thing, and sometimes it just makes me SICK.

<rant>
You're human.  I'm human.  All of the people around us (at least, for the most part :-) are human.

Being human, means that we have warts, zits, moles, dimples, wierd hair days, bloodshot eye moments, wrinkled clothes, and hair in our noses.

This is  life  my friend... It's not a photo-shoot where we get to pick a one in a thousand body, spend 2 hours lighting it just right, $4000 on the wardrobe and then blow 7 rolls just to get one good shot and then airbrus/photoshop even  that  to get everything in the right place, all the shadows right and

We don't live in Pleasantville, or  The Truman Show where every moment is  a product placement ad.

We are humans who burp, fart, piss, shit and blow our noses (or pick them when we think that nobody's looking) and bleed when we do it wrong. We make strange smells when we have sex and strange noises when we sleep.

If we're male we get erections at the most inopportune moments, and sometimes  don't  get them at even  more inopportune moments.  If we're female, similar things happen, but different parts do different things.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that other than the fact that the multi-billion dollar advertising industry has it's livelihood wraped up in making us think that any and everything that we are, do or even think is probably in some way broken and need fixing (at an appropriate price of course).

According to the advertising industry, we're too fat, too thin, too smelly, and/or not smelly enough (sometimes all at the same time).  The same company will try and get you addicted to tobacco (because it's sexy) and then sell you pills to get off of tobacco (because it's really not that sexy) -- soap and deoderants to get rid of your smells, and then extract of freaking SKUNKS to put back the smell that you just finished scrubbing off.

They'll sell you all sorts of pseudo medicinal garbage to get every hair off of your body, and then mascara and paint to make it look like the hairs you just ripped out of their pores, or fried into oblivion with chemicals are still there.

BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!

The same people who will don a KKK hood and string me up for being to dark-skinned will then go out and spend $4000 on the perfect tan and a perm, while Michael jackson spends $6million trying to look like
freaking Elizabeth tailor.  WTF????

For my part, I want my friends to be HUMANS, with their warts, blemmishes, bad habits and foibles.  As  long as they know to shit on my toilets, and sit on my chairs, I'm pretty much happy.

In a way, I actually like tracing the blemishes on my lovers' skin. Among other things, it means that I didn't just have sex with  a vinyl blow-up doll.

Enjoy the humanity of yourself and your friends.  Revel in it, enjoy it and love it for all too soon it shall all be gone, and we will be moaning the loss of the one with a mole on their chin -- and whenever we see someone with a mole on their chin, it will remind us of that lost friend.

Remember: If we were all perfect, life would be soooooooo boring. (and we'd never know who we were talking to).

</rant>

Thank  you for your attention.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled advertisement  life.

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Stephen Samuel (samuel@bcgreen.com)

Sat Jan 29 15:43:32 PST 2005