Facebook Can Be So Annoying!

Has anyone else noticed that Facebook has seemingly become nothing more than a place to post "Funny" or politically captioned pictures? It's about to the point where I feel like deleting a bunch of "Friends" who do nothing but post this stuff.

I have a lot of friends who still do make legitimate posts, but they don't post every day, so my Facebook wall has become covered with unfunny pictures from a whole bunch of people who I really don't even know. These are mainly friends-of-friends who read something I wrote on a friend's post, liked what I wrote, and asked to be my friend. (Does that happen to anyone else? I thought it was weird the first time it happened, but then it kept happening, so maybe it's more common than I know...)

From "Funny" pictures that aren't really funny, whose "Humor" comes from the swear words in the captions, to extremely preachy political pictures that vilify anyone who disagrees with them. It's really getting old. I'm tired of logging into Facebook and seeing the same content every day, with just a few slight modifications. I'm not saying that all captioned pictures are not funny. There are a few that have made me laugh out loud, but the key words there are "A Few." The vast majority are really getting on my nerves.

Why can't people come up with their own opinions, and their own humor? Why does absolutely everything some people post have to be from someone else? I'm not trying to say everyone who re-posts these things is an uncreative numbskull, and that you should never post funny pictures, or that you should never post something political that you agree with. I can be just as guilty of this as the next guy. There really is some funny stuff out there, and sometimes you really want someone else to laugh at what you just found. But when that becomes the only things you ever post, (and you post more than five every single day,) that's a problem!

Instead of re-posting something from someone else, why not start thinking about the things you like, and writing about them? Why not start taking pictures and posting them? Why not create your own artwork and post it? There's more to life than Facebook. Get out there and get inspired! Make your own stuff! Write your own thoughts! Then come back and use Facebook to show off what inspires you, not just that picture you liked, that your friend posted, who had gotten it from that page that collects pictures from other websites that re-post pictures they find on all the popular meme websites. I want to know what you think! I want to hear YOUR jokes! I want to see what you create!

I'm speaking to myself as well, I may not have too much free time outside of school and work, but when I do have some, I should be doing something more than just reading a bunch of Facebook jokes. I should be writing, painting, or designing! I should be outside with my camera, then back on my computer making art out of those pictures!

Facebook should be a place to share news, share your own pictures, share... yourself! Not a place to spend three hours looking at lolcats and toilet jokes. Remember how fun Facebook was when you first joined, and it was just you and your closest friends? Let's make it that fun again!

Judge Judy

Ok, this post is an odd one for me. I am writing it to try to sort out my own thoughts about something. Let me back up.

Years ago, I was a HUGE Judge Judy fan. Not sure why I loved her so much, that doesn't seem like a very natural show for a kid to love, but I did. I watched her every day that I could, along with Arthur, Wishbone, Carmen Sandiego, and various other PBS Kids shows, that normal kids watch. As I got older I stopped watching, not because I didn't like her any more, but I grew up, got a job, and her show, being a syndicated daytime show, always conflicted with my work schedule, and I just never had time to watch her any more. These days I don't even watch TV, so up until a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have even known if she was on TV any more. Recently though, I saw a link on YouTube that led me to a virtual treasure trove of years and years worth of Judge Judy cases, and I am now a full on Judge Judy fan once again, and now I know exactly why I love her so much. She is a seeker of truth and justice, and she is 100% for making people responsible for their own actions. Something that is, at least by the headlines that I am reading, disgustingly lacking in today's higher courts. Plus I just loved to see Judge Judy giving a verbal beat-down to the amoral idiots who are unfortunate enough to find themselves in her cross-hairs.

Now for the reason for my post. Earlier today, I watched one of the best, but most confusing cases I have ever seen. I never have any difficulty figuring out what Judge Judy's logic is for her rulings, but I did on this one. I rewatched the end many times over, rewound and watched parts of the beginning and middle a few times, and tried to figure out what on earth happened! Based on the comments below the video, I was not the only one confused. I would really love to know her thought process behind her ruling. I understood her ruling as it stood, I didn't like it, and neither did she, but without proof, she had no choice. The twist at the last second when she did a complete 180 and reversed her ruling in the Plaintiff's favor, seemingly came out of nowhere based on one seemingly in passing answer. Here is the episode in it's entirety so you can see what I mean. Make sure you have time to watch it all, as it is almost 20 minutes, because you need to have seen the whole episode and think about it in order to understand the final seconds, as it is quite complicated.



Now that you have (Hopefully) watched the entire thing, what did you think of it? Did you understand her ruling? Why did she rule in the Plaintiff's favor, based on the Defendant's suing the doctor who was not involved in this case at all?

This is my take on it, and I've been tired all day, so I confess that I am not thinking that fast, it took me quite awhile to work this out. I think her final decision was absolutely just and fair, because even based solely on the body language of the Defendant, there is absolutely no question in my mind of her guilt, and from her facial expressions, I am 99% sure that she is a sociopath who caused those injuries to herself in order to make her story more plausible. But Judge Judy said herself that the Plaintiff had no absolute proof that the Defendant posted the compromising photos on the office website. However, when she heard from the Defendant herself that she was involved in a lawsuit with the doctor she immediately reversed her ruling with no explanation.

The two things I can think of is that Judge Judy had not taken the plaintiff's claim of false accusation of assault into account in her final ruling. She based her final ruling on the photos alone, where she said there was not substantial proof, that the Defendant had posted the compromising photos. But when the Plaintiff began to plead that the defendant had tried using the photos of her injuries in another lawsuit, Judge Judy realized that the Defendant was suing the doctor and had been lying when she said she left the office by choice. If she was suing the doctor, it would have meant that she actually had been fired over the incident because she actually HAD posted the pictures, or she had tried suing based on those injuries and another court had found that the plaintiff was not guilty, giving Judge Judy something upon which she could legally grant the $5000 to the Plaintiff for false accusation. I feel like maybe some of it was edited out for time's sake and just a few seconds of explanation would have been very helpful.

If anyone has any other insight I would LOVE to hear it, because what I wrote is based on my thoughts alone, and another perspective would be greatly appreciated. Anyway, I have spent so much time tonight analyzing this case, more than I have ever thought about any other case ever, and my brain is quite tired, so I'm going to go and give it a rest now. :)

Brave Scene

As most of you know I don't get too excited about very many movies. There are a few that I want to see, but I only go to the theater if it works out. Rarely do I MAKE time to go to see a film. However anything by Pixar automatically is a "Make Time" film, and this summer they are releasing what people are calling their first "Princess" film. Brave is no ordinary "Princess film" however, as it is set in ancient Scotland. From what I've seen, the film looks amazing. The thing that strikes me every time is Merida's hair. It has got to be the most amazing hair in any film ever.

Pixar just released their latest trailer for Brave, and it's not so much a trailer as it is an entire scene from the movie. Watching this makes me want to see it even more.

 I've gotten so excited for this film that I did something I haven't done since Tim Burton released his version of Alice In Wonderland - Used a promotional image as my desktop background!

Second only to her hair, I LOVE her horse!

June 22 can't get here soon enough!

Last Two Paintings

These last two paintings took me the longest to do because I put so much detail into them. First I will show you the whole painting, then the details so you can better see what all is in them.

For this first painting the assignment was to paint a surrealist painting, so I decided to do a seascape where the birds were swimming, and the fish were flying, with a few other backwards details thrown in for good measure.

Such as an octopus climbing a tree and seahorses hanging like bats.

Flying Jellyfish

And flying penguins. :)

I also did a forest of sharks. :)

For the birds, I did cardinals in coral,

Along with Canada Geese and Ostriches

And probably my favorite part, a Barn Owl. :)

Our final painting was to be based on a famous painting, but we were to give it a modern twist. I chose “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat.

And for my “Modern Twist, I made it into a parody of the Apple Advertisements that have a silhouette against a solid colored background, with almost no other detail besides the iPod and ear buds.

As you can see I added some iPads as well.

I moved all the animals so that I could paint them better. It’s difficult to show two silhouettes if one is in front of another.

I remedied that here though.

And that concludes my paintings from last semester. Hopefully I’ll get this semester’s up a bit sooner… :)

Fall Semester Paintings

So I am FINALLY getting around to posting the paintings I did in Painting one. I will post most of them in this post, but I have two others that I painted that were very detailed, and I want to do some close up shots of some of those details. So I will save those for a later post. For now, here are the rest of my painting from last semester.

Let’s just get the horror over with. We HAD to do a self portrait. I HATE doing them! The only GOOD thing about this painting was the clothes. :) *Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. :) The rest is awful. I could not for the life of me get the skin tone right. I look like I have leprosy. Want an extreme close up, to fully grasp the grotesqueness of my hideously pale face?

SCREE! SCREE! SCREE!!! *Horror Movie Music*

This one is not so good. I painted it completely out of my head with no reference picture, and it shows. Always use a reference picture.

Of course, there’s an exception to every rule, I also did this one out of my head. It is watercolor though, so it works better than if I’d tried to do the same thing with acrylic.

Our still life assignment. I was pleased with how the vase turned out. It’s hard to tell, but there are some lighter flowers to the left of the yellow ones. I think if you click the picture you might be able to see a larger version.

Finally, the painting that I was most proud of, besides my final, (Coming next post) was this one, based on a photograph I took last year, right after I got my new camera. It’s also a picture I entered in the fair, so you may remember seeing it. If not, I will link to a post that contains it HERE.

And that’s all for now. Stay tuned, I hope to get the last two paintings up soon. :)

So Much Stuff…

I have been neglecting my blog lately. I have quite a bit I’ve been meaning to write about but school has gotten in the way. My Design 2 class has kept me very busy working on my Beanie Baby project that I showed you a glimpse of the other day. I finished that project and turned it in today, so I hope to get that on my blog soon. In my Digital Drawing class I haven’t been quite as busy, mainly because I’ve gotten everything done in class. I will have to export a few of those files into publishable pictures so you can see what I have made there as well. Aside from my Beanie Baby project, the class that has kept me the most busy has been my online graphic Design class. There are so many projects in there that it’s kind of ridiculous. They are all pretty fun though, so it’s not like I’m miserable doing them, it’s just kind of hard to juggle everything sometimes. One of these days when I get some free time I’ll make all those files into images so I can share them here as well. My last class is my Painting 2 class, and of course I’m having fun with that. I have some sketches that I will scan into my computer to share one of these times, but the paintings themselves will have to wait until I get them back at the end of the semester.

Speaking of paintings… I have not yet shared the ones I did LAST semester! Today I finally got them all out and took pictures of them, so as soon as I get them ready I will be sharing them on my blog. For now I will share a couple of the early ones with you, and hopefully I’ll get the rest up by tomorrow. We’ll see what happens with my Graphic Design class. I still have a lot to work on for that one.

These were the first “Two” paintings I did. They are color studies of an orange and a stool. You may have seen the orange already, as I took a picture of it the week after I painted it.

       

Art History Brush

I have discovered that the Art History brush tool in Photoshop actually has a use! I could never figure out what good it was when I tried it out, but I came across a video online that told me how to use it. It's basic function is to create painted effects. To try it out for myself, I took a picture of one of my old Beanie Babies, (This is for a school project, more on that in a future post) and I started playing with it.

This was my original picture.

The first thing I had to do was clean it up for my project for school.

After I had it looking good enough for my assignment, I saved it and started playing around with the Art History Brush. This was my result.

I had no idea I could do this before! It looks like a watercolor painting or something, and that's only one of the many, many possibilities with that brush! I can't wait to see what else I can do!