Ramble on

So... yeah.

I've been moping. My dog, Lana, has been moping. We've been mopey. Moper McMopersons. My cat, Nina, aka Jabba the Cat - who is trying her best to lose that nickname, now that I've just found out she has a hyperthyroid problem and is losing weight super fast and Hello! More vet bills! *sigh* - however, has been thrilled there is one less slobbery beast to steal her food and fight for position near me on the couch. And the kids have been fine - Chicky likes the shock value of talking about death and CC only once stepped into the sun room and asked "Where Fisher go?", which broke my heart into ten million tiny pieces... But that was a week ago. And your comments and emails and words of love were so very welcome and filled my cold, dead heart with warmth until it turned black and inky again. So there's that.

(That's me saying Thank You, by the way.)

To get me out of this funk, and possibly kick start my writing again - did I mention Chicky had a birthday? Three weeks ago? No? She's five now. I should probably write something about that... before she's 15. And CC. Where do I even begin to write about CC? - might I suggest a little audience participation?

Wait! Don't go. It's painless, I promise.

I poseth to you, dearest reader, this question -

At what age do (did) you feel comfortable allowing your child(ren) outside to play alone and unsupervised (except for the surreptitious viewing out the window by overprotective parent, oh, every five seconds)? Does your location factor in to your decision? And how far will you let them go out of view? Next door to the neighbor's house? Two feet from the front door? In the backyard, but only if tethered by a ten foot leash and only if Child Services isn't looking?

What sayeth you?

And no, Christopher Cross is not invited

It's the Thursday before a holiday weekend - except for you Canadians, happy belated Canada Day! - and we here in the North East are experiencing a pattern of weather that I like to affectionately call A Hundred Pounds of Shit in a Five Pound Bag.

Too harsh? You should have seen what I deleted.

No one has any desire to do anything but stare slack-jawed out the window at the rain and thunder and wish for Mother Nature to throw us a freaking bone already and give us just a little peak of sun. Except for you in those states that actually have sun, but I don't feel like thinking about you right now. I may say something... unpleasant.

Anyway. In honor of the rain (seriously, I think I just saw a chipmunk on a tree bark boat go floating down my driveway) it's audience participation day! Oh goody!

I'd like to know what you would take with you on an ark.

Think of it as Ark-fest 2009. Or "Ark 2.0 - The New Millenium : Moses Noah* Returns. And this time he's pissed". Or something like that.

I'll start.

I would of course take my computer. I'd Twitter the whole thing -

Day 2, This isn't too bad. We're all getting along. Even the donkey's are cooperating. Hope we don't run out of carrots.

Day 11 - Okay, what the hell is that stench? I'm looking at you, elephants.

Day 19 - Planning on inviting the pigs to the lido deck for "dinner". Craving bacon.

Day 36 - Hey! Is that land? Nope, whale. FAIL. (Get it? Fail Whale? HA!)

The second thing I would bring is toilet paper. This isn't the BC's, people. We can put a man on the moon, we can certainly install terlets for the humans.

And the third thing I would bring is John Krasinski. He would be my "Plus 1". We could repopulate the earth with adorablely lanky babies who would have their father's quirky dry wit and my love of shoes. You can thank me later, world.

So, what would you bring on the ark when the flood waters finally overtake us? And they will. Oh yes, they will.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA...*cough**choke**gag**cough* Ahem... BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

(And yes, I know I'm supposed to bring my husband and kids. But I've been stuck in the house with these people for days on end. After this last month? They're fending for themselves.)

----------------

*Yeah, yeah... I said Moses, not Noah. Honest mistake. I mean, I know Moses and Noah didn't have anything to do with each other, but wouldn't that have worked out excellent for each? Hey, Moses. God's sending this great flood somethingorother to teach us all a lesson. How's that parting of the seas thing you've been working on? *looking over his shoulder* Wanna give it a go, uh, now? Moses? Where you going?

Seven years of Catholic school right here, baby.

New technology and the right to privacy - No, you do not have the right to take my kid's picture

Yesterday was one of those rare days when I could run to Trader Joe's (and I use the term "run" very loosely since I might have broken my baby toe the day before) with only CC in tow, leaving Chicky behind to have a Father's Day cartoon-fest at home with her dad.

Going to the supermarket with two kids is a drag. Going to the supermarket with only one kid seems like a vacation in comparison. So since I hadn't made it to the store the day before (again, broken toe), Sunday was my day to market shop to gather all necessary food and sundries necessary to keep our family of four alive and not killing each other ("Moooom, Daddy at the rest of the cereal and now I have noooone."). Not to mention I needed the makings for that evenings Father's Day feast of goodness. Or as I like to call it, Chicken Piccata.

CC, despite having her one thousandth and one head cold of the year, was in good spirits and since I could brace myself on the shopping cart, taking some weight off of my now blackened toe, I was too. So as we walked down the narrow aisles I sang songs and she clapped and made faces. We were, in a word, pretty freaking adorable to watch. No really. No extreme maternal bias at all.

As I oogled the many premade and frozen culinary delights TJ's has to offer, a young woman walked up to us and remarked on whatever silly face CC was making at the moment. Since I was deciding between spanakopita and the chipotle chicken skewers, I wasn't really paying close attention.

(Note to self: no more grocery shopping while hungry. Or else you will yet again come home with two different flavors of ice cream and a large box of Asian barbecue beef instead of the broccoli and apples you went there for. Also, you won't be watching closely when strange people approach your very cute and very innocent baby. But I digress.)

The woman then proceeded to take out her camera phone to take a picture of my child.

Without my permission.

But before I could say, Hold on there, Snappy McSnapperson, CC stopped making whatever picture-worthy face that was there a minute before and instead stared at this strange person with a face I can only assume looked exactly like mine at that moment - a combination ofslack-jawed confusion and slight repulsion at this woman, who really couldn't have been any more than 25 years old, who was about to take an unauthorized picture of an unknown child.

The one thing that crossed my mind as I mumbled something about, Oops, oh well, the face is gone so we're going to move along now - after imagining myself punching her in the face - was, Wow, the BALLS on that woman. The second thought - after imagining myself making her eat her camera phone - was that she was probably a blogger.

I'm only partly kidding about that.

Maybe this is hypocritical of me since I do share my children's photos on the internet with, you know, strangers and, OMG, maybe there's a pedophile out there who stumbled across my blog and found the pictures of my child making dead fish faces and now he's COMING TO GET US...

Ahem.

... But I don't believe that some random person who hasn't even been properly introduced to me should whip out a camera and start taking pictures while we're in the frozen foods section of the supermarket.

This is my website so I decide what goes on it. I decide what pictures I want to share with the world. For the love of Pete, even at Chicky's preschool we were asked to sign a waiver authorizing the use of our children's likeness on their website and I've pledged my undying love for those people.

Of course, I have no idea what that young woman was going to do with the picture after she took it. Show it to her roommate maybe? Her mom? Her gynecologist? I don't know. Chances are, it would have been stored in her phone until the following weekend when drunken naked pictures needed to be taken at the raging party at her sister's boyfriend's apartment and then it would have been deleted to make more room. Because her best friend Bob passed out and drooling on the bathroom floor takes precendence, you know?

Whatever she was or wasn't going to do with it, the bottom line (or maybe I shold say, point 1) is this: Do our children have a right to privacy even when their parents are plastering their image all over the internet?

I say yes. But does that hold any water from a legal standpoint?

Like I said, I have no idea what the woman... okay, girl. What the girl was going to do with this picture. Probably nothing. What bothered me the most was that she was taking a picture of a minor child without express permission of the child's parent who just happened to be standing right there. What she was going to do with the photograph after the fact was anybody's guess.

I was a Communications major in college. I graduated with a degree in Broadcast Communications with a minor in journalism so I know the rights a private citizen has in public vs. private spaces in regard to print and broadcast. What I don't know, and maybe someone can clue me in, is what happens in this digital age of blogs and personal websites and social networking sites to that private citizen's rights (especially a private citizen who is a minor) when anyone with the most basic technology can snap a picture or take a video and make it available to anyone with a computer.

One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of privacy.

Restatement (Second) of Torts, § 652C

But believe it or not, the main point of this post (Point 2) is not to bring light to the legalities of online media, whether it be personal or professional, but to ask this question:

Have we gotten a little snap happy now that we have digital cameras, camera phones, and video cameras that can be stored in your back pocket? Have we as a race of people lost our good sense and grasp of basic manners (if we had them at all) in regard to taking pictures of people, minor or not, and putting them on public websites or simply sharing them with friends and strangers?

How many times have you seen something that an unknown person was doing that struck you as funny and you took our your iPhone to take a picture? A picture that you eventually uploaded to Twitter or some other site? Did you take a picture that showed the person's face? Did you show them in a comprimising light?

How far is too far?

Before I'm seen as preachy I will tell you that I have taken pictures like that before. While getting a pedicure, for instance, I joked on Twitter that the woman painting my toes had an impressive rack. I then proceeded to take her picture without her knowing it, thinking maybe I would share it via TwitPic or something. Then I deleted it because I came to my senses. And that woman was an adult, not a 12 month old minor child.

CC was not doing anything out of the ordinary and there's a good chance that girl wasn't going to sell my child's likeness for monetary gain but still, it bothered me that she was so bold as to think she could take my child's picture without getting permission. Have we lost our good sense as a society because technology has become so easy? Now that we have access to pretty much everything has our voyeuristic tendencies gone crazy?

I'd like to know what you think.

I Spy - mornings

I think I've figured out why writer's block is kicking my ass. My life? It is boring, hopelessly mundane and not inter....

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Whoops, sorry about that. I fell asleep there.

So instead of fighting it, I'm going to embrace it (Viva la Boring Ass Life!) with a little thing I call "I Spy".

What's that? There's already a game called "I Spy"? I didn't say I was original, I said I was boring. Catch up, will ya?

Every Friday I'll post a picture of something I see, a snippet out of my life. You should do it too. It'll be super duper fun! Really!

What?

Oh don't even pretend you don't like to see into people's lives. I know you look into darkened windows at night while driving through your neighborhood. You probably even sit in your bedroom at night with your camera pointed at your next door neighbor's windows. Or maybe that's just me?

Um, moving on.

The point of the project, lambs, is to make the mundane interesting. Play along. Take a picture of something, anything, that you see and describe it, then leave a comment here with a link to your "I Spy" post. Give us a glimpse of your life. It will be fun. I promise. Pinky swear. At the very least, it will give you an excuse to post something. Some might call it phoning it in, but I call it "desperate times/desperate measures".

So go ahead, grab your camera and take a picture of something. I'll wait.

C'mon, it's not brain surgery. Just take a pictures. Any picture.

Or I could do it for you. I have a long lens. Ahem.

-----------------

Mornings at Casa de Chicky:


French press, coffee mug, blueberry/lemon muffin I baked yesterday next to used tissues because CC and I are sick. Phlegm and baked goods, two great tastes that go great together.

Twitter open on my laptop. I'm the only one in the world who still uses the actual Twitter platform.

Baby bib, Cheerios, a bowl of fruit.

This is what my mornings look like when we have nothing better to do. Muy exciting, no?