The Fast Food Saga: Part Six- I AM THE MASCOT.

Yes, you read the title correctly. My life's goal has been completed. I am the mascot at The Franchise.

On Being the Mascot

It's just as much fun as I thought it would be. The suit is about seven feet tall, and the only visibility is through the giant, creepily smiling mouth and the giant, never-blinking eyes. Seriously. This thing's creepy.

The limited visibility in the suit makes things such as walking a lot more interesting. The operator of the suit has to constantly bob his head around and crane his neck to get any kind of idea of what's going on around him. When the operator takes the suit off and attempts to walk, he must remember to cease bobbing his head, as he is now a normal person, and people who walk like seagulls are generally known as idiots. I may or may not have learned this the hard way.

Once I have the suit on, I become another person entirely. I hand a lot of balloons to little kids, give a lot of high fives, and engage in an inordinate amount of dancing. This is another thing I have to adjust to when I take off the suit. You see, when there's a seven foot tall ice cream cone doing the Macarena in front of a group of kids, they squeal and giggle, and the parents find it amusing.

When it's a seventeen year old kid with glasses enthusiastically doing the Macarena for the kiddies... Not so much.

I had to consciously restrain myself from dancing in front of several children after I clocked out tonight.

My co-workers warned me that it wasn't always fun. They were right, to some extent. It gets very hot in the suit. The air you're breathing is the same air you've been breathing for the past two hours, mixed with sweat and the smell of fast food. Not extremely pleasant.

Also, the suit is pretty heavy, so your shoulders get tired quickly. And the arm holes are out the front of the suit, rather than the side, so you have to walk around kinda like a zombie. A zombie seagull.

(As I composed this post, I thought I'd check and see if there are any image results for "zombie seagull" from the Googles. There are.)

This was the closest thing I could find. It's a zombie-skeleton-surfing-bird... thing. You're welcome.

Overall, though, it's a fun job. The hordes of kids swarming around you provide something of an ego-booster, albeit a strange one.

See you guys next time.

Quote of the Day:

"Mommy, I don't wanna hug the giant ice cream cone!"

-A traumatized four-year-old

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Five- Back on Track

Last week was a bad week at work. I wasn't doing well for a number of reasons, and then a guy got fired. With this in mind, I didn't feel like posting last week, because there was nothing funny or entertaining to say.

This week has been much, much better.

My boss was much happier today, which made work much easier. Somehow I also had much more energy to power through the day, so that was nice.

The Mascot

The fast food restaurant where I work has a mascot. This mascot roams around the dining room on select days, entertaining the kids. If I told you exactly what kind of mascot it was, I'd pretty much divulge what company I work for, which is something I can't do. Suffice to say that the mascot is a giant walking food item. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

I want to be the lucky guy in the suit. I love working with kids, and being the mascot looks like a lot of fun. So I've set that as my goal. My life ambition right now is to get inside that suit and walk around the dining room scaring entertaining kids.

Other co-workers who have done it before tell me that it isn't fun. "It's really hot in there," they say. "You'll start hating it after a while," they tell me.

Perhaps, deep inside, they've lost their childlike spirit, growing cynical and jaded as time robs them of life's simple pleasures.

Or maybe they're right and it is no fun.

Either way, I'm not going to let them crush my dreams. I will be the mascot one day. Just you wait...

Cooked Hand

My hand was cooked today. I was reaching into a fryer and grabbing some onion rings and a glob of oil splashed onto the inside of my hand. Ouch.

I probably shouldn't tell you what deep fried hand smells like.

I'm telling you anyway.

It smells like chicken. Fried chicken.

The only thing missing was batter and a bit of salt and pepper. It would have been enough to make any common cannibal's mouth water as they fondly remembered cannibal picnics on warm summer evenings with their cannibal friends, sitting on cannibal blankets and feasting on chocolate covered aunts, while the cannibal children laugh and frolic on the playground in their game of swallow the leader...

Wow. That got a bit out of hand.

Anyway.


Quote of the Day:

"Seth, you're getting pretty good at fryers. I guess that makes you Lord of the Fries."

-Person for whom I am too lazy to think of a fake name

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Four- Epic Pep Talk

I just finished another shift at The Franchise. It's the second one since my last post, and I apologize for not getting a post up after that shift. But between school (gotta graduate somehow, right?) and work and school and more school.... OK, actually I don't apologize because I had a perfectly reasonable excuse for not posting. So there.

Best Pep Talk EVER

I arrived, clocked in, washed up, donned my fashionable kitchen attire, and walked into the kitchen ready to rock and roll. My manager (it was Marvin this time) said, "OK, so today, we're gonna have you doing fryers by yourself. That means you'll be responsible for all of the fryers and this guy over here is going to help you only when you're falling way behind."

Fantastic.

It was a Thursday night and Thursdays are usually pretty slow. This was not a slow Thursday. This was a mind-blisteringly busy Thursday. I guess everyone in town decided they needed food that had been immersed in oil. Immediately.

I launched into the endless stream of orders and was making food when Marvin said, "Listen up!"

I listened up, but I was not prepared for what he was about to do. He was about to deliver the greatest pep talk in the history of them all. Here it is:

"OK, so, uhhh... Drive thru orders were a little slow, so... speed those up a little. And... we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

Dead silence filled the room and drowned out the chaotic din of the fryers, the grill, the vents, and everything else.

Somewhere, in the distance, I could hear a fly walking up the wall. It stopped and rubbed its hands together in that fly-esque way.

Outside, an errant tumbleweed drifted and rolled across the parking lot.

Then, one person clapped. Very slowly, we all joined in. It was exactly like this video:

And then we continued our work, comforted by the knowledge that we had such a fearless and inspiring leader to guide us through the narrow paths and hazards of the fast food industry.

Fun Facts:

• Onion rings are absurdly difficult to put into bags. They are shaped weirdly and they are unreasonably hot, so the process of putting a serving of onion rings into a bag is not an entertaining one, to say the least.
• Seriously guys, stop ordering onion rings. Or I'll make you come back here and bag them yourself.
• I'm not quite ready for the big leagues when it comes to running fryers. We've got five of them, and the multitasking required for the job is intense. 
• Note to self: Play more Cake Mania before next shift.
• Lucifer is still as lucifer-y as ever. I had to refill him. This involves holding him, tight, pulling his lid off, and pouring in new salt. This causes fourth-degree tissue burns at minimum. 

Until next time, THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!

Quote of the Day:

"...we need to, umm... make some good quality food. Tonight. So... let's do that now."

-My Manager

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The Fast Food Saga: Part Three- Pressure's On!

Tonight my manager told me we'd focus more on Time of Service (The Franchise's code for "Your job is not hard enough, let's make you work FASTER!!")

I did not do well in this area tonight. I guess the added pressure made me nervous enough to mess up more. So my night was filled with fry fumbling, cheese curd craziness, chicken tender turmoil, and onion ring... Something. I've lost interest in the alliteration now, you can figure something out for yourself.

Nicest Guy in the Fast Food Industry

The aforementioned individual is not me. I'm a pretty nice guy at work, but there is one whom I have met, who outshines the nicest of the nice. It's almost scary.

Aaron (I'm going to call him Aaron) was assigned to train me tonight, and he was really good at it. He even made the really scary task of cleaning the fryers seem like a barefoot midnight stroll through a mossy woodland trail. Yep. That's totally what it felt like.

This guy deserves a raise.

Fryers Actually Work by Magic

I asked "Caleb", another of my co-workers, exactly how the fry oil filter system worked. He started to go into a long, technical explanation, but then stopped himself and told me it's essentially magic. He doesn't know how it really works. Our managers don't know how it really works. No one knows how it works.

Hence, it's clearly magical.

That's all for now. See you next week, and remember, anyone who says "nothing is impossible" has obviously never tried to staple jello to a tree. I'm not sure what bearing this fact has on this blog post, but there you go. It's true.

Quote of the Day:

"There's just a bunch of wizards in there, contemplating magical algorithms and stuff. That's how it works."
-Caleb


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The Fast Food Saga: Part Two- More Fryers.

Hi again. 

Today I worked another shift at The Franchise. It was a good one, as it was a pretty slow day. The weather was pretty snowy and it's New Year's Eve, so I guess a lot of people decided not to eat out tonight. 

I did get my new pants. Hooray. Now I can work in at 28 inch waist without constantly reaching down to adjust my rapidly slipping uniform pants.

I did actually learn a few things again:

Cleaning the fryers is terrifying.

In order to clean our five fabulous food fryers, one must don a heat glove, turn the fryer off, remove the grate from the bottom of the unreasonably hot oil, send it back to be washed, remove the backplate, send that back to be washed, pull a valve to empty the fryer, and scrub the walls of the fryer out with a piece of steel wool. This is pretty simple as long as you avoid getting small patches of your skin cooked by the oil. Then comes the terrifying part: You've got to connect a hose to the pipes under the fryer, run it up to the fryer you're cleaning, and pull a valve to spray ridiculously hot oil all over the inner walls of the fryer. This isn't like a normal hose. This is like a high pressure fire hose spewing out fiery hot doom all over the place. I'm told this makes the fryer clean somehow. One wrong move, though, and you'll spray searing hot oil all over the kitchen and your three fellow kitchen workers. Easy right? Yep. Piece of cake.

People need to stop ordering onion rings.

I can bag fries now. It's pretty easy to me since I've learned the touch of the fry bagging masters, and I long ago abandoned all the pain sensing nerves in the ends of my fingers. But onion rings are a different matter altogether. With fries, they usually sit for a few seconds before being bagged. But onion rings have to go straight from the fryer to the bag, with no time to cool off. Also, they are bigger than fries and harder to insert into the bags. These factors combine to make it really hard to bag onion rings. I guess I'll get better with practice, but for now I still fumble around awkwardly every time. So do me a favor and don't order any onion rings while I'm working. Ok? Thanks.

Well, that's what I've got for now. If you were expecting a profound thoughtful New Years message in the post, you're not going to get it here. Click this link for the 2012 post, and replace stuff with things pertinent to 2013. I'm lazy.

Quote of the Day:

"Hey, can you clean the fryers for me?"

-My Manager



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The Fast Food Saga: Part One

Great news: I recently (and by recently I mean yesterday) got a job at a fast food restaurant. I've needed a job for a very long time, so having one unexpectedly is a huge thrill. You'll notice by now that I haven't mentioned the name of the restaurant, and I just want to get a few things related to that out of the way before I start:

• I'm not going to mention the name of this restaurant. Ever. Those of you who know me in real life will probably know which one it is, but I will not be using the name of the restaurant online, since the company frowns upon that sort of thing. I will refer to it as The Franchise.
• The views, opinions, and narratives I'm expressing in my posts do not reflect those of the company for which I work (which will of course remain nameless.)
• Any comments mentioning the name of the company for which I work will be deleted immediately.
• All names of coworkers and guests have been changed for reasons which should be obvious to you by now.

With that over with, let's begin the Fast Food Saga.

Day One:

I showed up for my first shift dressed in uniform pants several sizes too big for me. To put my dilemma in perspective, I'm a very tall, skinny guy who usually wears a 29 inch waist with a 34 or higher inseam. These were way bigger than that.  But this was the smallest they had, so it would have to do.

After a brief tour of the place, I was plunged into my first task: Making fries. It's a simple job in theory. There are several fryers, and frozen potato sticks are poured into baskets which are then plunged into the extremely hot oil. And when I say extremely hot, I'm talking heat levels that make me seriously confused as to why the oil isn't actually on fire.

When working fries, you must stand in front of these fryers, put batches of frozen potato sticks into the baskets, drop the baskets in the oil, set the timer, and wait for them to cook. After the timers go off, you pull out the baskets, shake them, and dump the fries onto the fry table. Once there's a pile of fries, they are salted and scooped into bags, then placed on the chutes for distribution into guest's orders.

Like I said, a simple job.

But, this being my first shift, it was not simple. I learned one thing very quickly: 

Everything is hot.

The kitchen is hot to begin with, considering most of the real estate is taken up by a giant, extremely hot grill and giant, extremely hot fryers. Most of the things in the kitchen are made of metal. And that metal gets very hot. 

• There's a scoop used to insert the fries into the bags. That scoop is hot. 
• There are metal baskets used to submerge various foods into the absurdly hot oil. Those baskets are hot.
• There are fries coming out of the absurdly hot oil. Those fries are hot.
• There's also a saltshaker. A big, metal, demonic saltshaker sent from one of the outer circles of Hell, specifically designed to blister, burn, sear, and otherwise cook your fingers every time you touch it.
• I do not like this saltshaker.

Another thing I learned:

Scooping fries takes more skill than is initially expected.

All I have to do is take things and put them in bags. How in the world can that be difficult? I've put lots of things in lots of bags before, but somehow, bagging fries is different. There's a certain touch you have to develop to join the ranks of the expert fry baggers. I do not have this touch. 

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the only thing shielding my delicate Caucasian basement-dweller hands from a raging inferno of deep-fried death is a thin paper bag. Once I hold a medium bag of french fries for about three seconds, the scalding begins. 

In addition, after every batch of fries is dumped onto the table, one must engage in the delightful activity of grabbing Lucifer (that's the saltshaker, I've named it Lucifer) and shaking it upside down to dispense salt on the pile of fries. This involves grasping Lucifer for more than about thirteen milliseconds, at which point one's fingers start to cook.

All these factors combine into a nice little medley of circumstance that makes it very difficult to accurately ensure that the correct number of fries, or any at all for that matter, end up in the bags.

Despite all of the above, I'm beginning to like my job. After a while, most of the nerve endings on my fingers were sautéed to the point where they ceased to register pain. Once I reached this point, I was able to bag fries quite quickly.

The moral to this whole thing, if there really can be a moral, is that you should think of the guys in the back next time you order your burger and fries. It's more work than you might think, and I've found that out on my first day. 

That's all for now, folks. Be sure to tune in next time for more tales of the fast food kitchen.

Quote of the Day: 

"We'll put you on fries to start out with. That's the easiest job."

-My Manager


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A Festive Poem.

Twas the day before Christmas. Seth had a sore throat.

Would he be able to carol? The chance was remote.

Cough drops and medicine and water he tried,

But his singing voice still just seemed to have died.

He decided to be stoic, to sing anyway.

He wanted just to be festive, on this special day.

But when the first verse escaped from his lips,

It sounded like a fleet of rusty steamships.

The tree and the boxes and presents within,

all shook from the force of the Apocalyptic din.

He tried 'Silent Night', he tried 'Jingle Bells'.

But he still only sounded like Sinatra from hell.

During his songs there arose such a clatter,

It brought the dog running, to see what was the matter.

The neighbors walked outside to join in the fun,

And Dad descended the stairs, holding his gun.

"Stop!" Seth hollered. "I beg you, don't shoot!

This Christmas, I think I'll be forced to be mute."

"We'll call you a doctor!" they said with a smile.

"He'll get you fixed up, in just a short while."

So the doctor arrived, with his stethoscope and tools

He tried to look confident, he tried to play it cool.

He told Seth, "Try to sing! It can't be that bad."

So he did. And the doctor fled to Trinidad.

"Bah humbug!" Seth croaked. "He's clearly just weak."

And he wondered out loud, "Who else should I seek?"

Suddenly in his mind there arose a new thought.

"If the talent's not there, it can surely be bought."

He called up his friend, a music producer.

"Help me! Come quick! I sound like a rooster."

His friend let Seth know he'd be there in a jiffy

With equipment to make his singing quite spiffy.

"Autotune!" Seth shouted. "Why that's it of course!"

"It'll make me sound great, even though I'm still hoarse."

The producer arrived, with his mixer and cables

And set up a studio on the dining room table.

"Sing into this mic," he said with a smile.

I'll turn a few knobs, you'll sound great in a while.

Seth picked it up, his family covered their ears.

But when he started to sing, it was worse than they'd feared.

It was louder, more deafening, not mellow and sweet.

Birds fell from the sky, cars crashed in the street.

"Stop! Turn it off!" his family protested.

"At this rate you'll just get us all arrested!"

Disturbing the peace was a terrible offense

So Seth stopped his singing, fearing legal expense.

He finally gave up on his festive endeavor,

He thought he'd be forced to be silent forever.

So he took to his blog, and composed this short post.

It wasn't perfection, but more festive than most.

And so here it is, this carol I've typed

I won't try to sing it (I respect human life.)

Merry Christmas.

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Ice cream.

I made a discovery a while ago. Ice cream.

Well, I knew about ice cream before. I just found these little pints of ice cream at Pick 'n Save that are really cheap. So...

I bought some.

It started with four pints. I brought them home and put them in the freezer. My thought was, "I'm going to eat these really slowly and make them last two weeks." Later that day I pulled one out of the freezer. Ten minutes later, I'd eaten the whole pint. I justified it as a fluke and something that would never happen again.

Two days later, there was no more ice cream. None. Why? I'd eaten it all. One thought began to completely consume my consciousness: GET MORE ICE CREAM.

So I did. I went to Pick 'n Save and bought four more pints. Just as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I realized that four was not enough. I pulled a quick U-turn (my apologies to the Prius that was in the oncoming lane) and raced back to the store. I ran to the frozen aisle and swept ten or twelve more pints off of the shelf. With a crazed gleam in my eye, I pushed my cart to the checkout aisle, swiped my debit card, and left, finally satisfied. But not for long.

48 hours later, I was back for more. I ran to the aisle. Grabbed the ice cream. Swiped my card. Went home. Ate the ice cream.

Within a week, it seemed normal. I'd wake up, drive to the store, grab the ice cream, swipe the card, drive home, eat. This was my routine. My life.

Until that fateful Thursday when the credit card machine beeped at me. I was swiping my card and it beeped at me. 'INSUFFICIENT FUNDS', it said. I panicked.

"I'll be right back, Rita", I told the cashier (we were on a first name basis by now). I walked back to my van. I took a sharpie and some cardboard and made a sign that said "THINGS FOR SALE." I then began selling everything in my possession. I sold my phone. And my driver's license. I sold the seats from the back of my van. I sold my clothes to a consignment shop. I even managed to convince a lady named Cindy that an empty Pepsi bottle I found in the back of my van was full of air from the royal wedding. Made $15 off of that.

Finally, dressed in an old garbage bag I found wrapped around a stop sign, I returned triumphantly to Pick 'n Save with $329.87 in small bills and change. I purchased all of the ice cream. ALL of the ice cream.

Fast forward to now. I've finally been released from the hospital. I have a session with a therapist scheduled for every Monday and Thursday in the next three months. Ice cream has stopped consuming my life. I'm finally free.









Please note that the above story is completely false. None of this really happened, with the exception of the fact that I did indeed purchase some ice cream a while ago. But it makes a much better excuse for why I haven't posted in such a long time than "I'm too lazy".

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Computers (According to Hollywood)

There are a lot of great movies out there. Some of them are quite credible, realistic, and engaging. I enjoy them immensely. But one thing bugs me: Hollywood producers don't seem to know anything about anything electronic.

In most modern-set movies, there will be a scene with a computer. And that computer is making idiotic bleeping noises every time someone presses a button! For me, it destroys the entire realism and believability of the scene when someone's reading a text message on their iPhone and all of a sudden an electronic din fills the room just because they're typing a reply. Directors and screenwriters know that the real world doesn't work that way. But they continue to insist on utterly wrecking the credibility of a potentially awesome scene by inserting corny, tinny beeping sounds into every single computer scene! Why can't movie computers be like real life computers? A pleasant "blinng" here and there when you get a notification is fine. But a constant racket is just obnoxious. Can you imagine if everyones electronics did that? Offices full of computers would be a nightmare.

One thing I've also noticed is that movie characters seem physically unable to operate a computer with a mouse. Seriously.  Everything is apparently controlled by typing, just like in 1985 when all you had was a command line!

(Good guy 1: "Oh, no! Looks like the bad guys are trying to access the main gate! Quick, use the computer system to lock it!"

Good guy 2: "Right away sir! Let me try to navigate through this supposedly modern operating system only by quickly hitting random characters on a keyboard! OK, got it!"

Bad guys: "Rats! Foiled again. It's locked!")

Speaking of bad guys, the go-to strategy for pretty much everything seems to be "hacking". Apparently. anything and everything electronic can be "hacked into". It's the same plot-hole filling spackle used in Star Trek (future technology), and Harry Potter (magic). If you're a good writer, you don't have to rely on stupid crutches like that.

(Movie Writer Bill: "Hey Frank! I think I've written myself into a corner! How am I supposed to get our main characters out of the bad guys lair?"

Movie Writer Frank: "I dunno. Have them hack into the light switches with their phones and sneak past the bad guys. Problem solved."

Bill: "Hmm. Seems legit! Okay!"

Frank: "Fine. Pass me another beer, will ya?")

Another observation is that a computer's interface is almost never true-to-life unless the company is paying for product placement. If anyone else has seen the movie "Independence Day" (if not then look it up on Netflix because it's great), you'll notice that at the end, the entire alien scourge is defeated with an Apple Powerbook 5300! Random coincidence? No. Apple paid for the product placement so that the entire culmination of the film is nothing but a cheap advertisement for a laptop.

So consider this an open letter to every movie director, producer, and screenwriter ever:

STOP IT! Just stop! Get back to reality! It's time to salvage any hope of releasing credible movies! Stop with the beeping. Stop with the keyboard commands. And the product placement. And please, please, please, STOP with the hacking. 

-Me

\\-end of rant-\\

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Driving, Independence, and Wasps.

I was driving to the library today. I drive a '99 Chevy AstroVan (click to see the previous post about this vehicle).

The air conditioning in this vehicle kicked the bucket long ago, so I prefer to drive with all of the windows down rather than sit inside roasting in the sunlight. I was driving along, listening to music, and really enjoying the beautiful, sunny day.

Suddenly I saw two large "SPLAT" marks appear on the windshield. As I sat and contemplated the fact that I had just killed my first animals with a vehicle, one of the (as I later found out) wasps that had escaped their untimely demise managed to fly into my open window and up my sleeve, coming to rest on an unsuspecting patch of my back. The wasp, I suppose, paused a minute to savor the feeling of avenging his recently splattered siblings, and then with little ceremony, plunged his stinger into my body. I yelped. Loudly.

I've been stung by wasps before. Mostly while I was on staff at Camp Indian Trails last year. But somehow the sting of a wasp avenging the senseless murder of his fellow wasps tends to hurt a lot more than a normal sting. It felt like a red hot needle of justice being inserted into my skin, and pumping in something like battery acid.

Anyway, after yelping, I could still feel the apparently satisfied wasp buzzing and squirming around gleefully in my shirt. This is not a pleasant sensation to experience while motoring along at fifty miles per hour. After narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic, I managed to pull onto a nearby curb, leap from my vehicle, and frantically remove my shirt, shaking it at arms length to try to liberate the insect within. Some poor suburbanite was watering plants in his front yard across the street. He calmly watched this happen, hose in hand, causing major flooding to his tulips.

I finally got the offending bug out of my clothing, and tried to maintain at least a slight air of dignity as I donned my shirt. Despite my efforts to not look ridiculous, the man continued staring at me. I nodded solemnly and uttered a few words about stinging insects and windows. He nodded nervously and backed away as I got back into the car and resumed driving. I still wonder what he thought was going on. All the way to the library I jumped and gasped at slightest sensation of anything touching my body, fearing that more wasps were hiding in the car.

I eventually got to the library, which brings me to the main point of this post. It's weird finally having a drivers license. Being able to go pretty much anywhere alone is a surprisingly scary feeling. The first time I drove alone I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd stolen the car and was going to be pulled over and arrested at any moment.

That being said, it's really nice to have that bit of independance. Since I have yet to crash, I'm allowed to use the van. It gets about fourteen miles per gallon in the city so I'm glad I'm not paying for the gas (yet.)

After the wasp incident I had a relaxing afternoon basking in a sunny window in the library, reading the latest issue of Wired magazine.

Needless to say I drove home with the windows firmly closed.

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Instagram is not art.

Has anyone seen Instagram? Cute, isn't it? Did you know that the people who use it call their filtered, distorted, grainy photos "art"? I have four words for these people:

Instagram is not art.

You know what? That's not enough emphasis. Let's try this:

INSTAGRAM IS NOT ART.

Hopefully, an italic bold underlined over-sized typeface will get this message through to the fake-retro clouded brains of these pour souls.

For the benefit of those who don't know what Instagram is, let me explain. Instagram is a photo sharing service that lets those with smartphones, well, share their photos. At least, that's what it's supposed to do. In reality, what it ends up doing is destroying a lot of potentially great photos by slapping "artistic" filters over them. 

I made an instagram'd copy of the first painting you think of when you think "art". Here's my version of the Mona Lisa:

There! I made Art! See how I added that film grain, tweaked the saturation and contrast, and put it into a Polaroid frame? Now it's Art, right? Wrong. There was absolutely no creative process involved. I simply clicked on one of 17 available photo filters. The only part that took any effort was putting both photos in front of a background and adding text. (I did that in Gimp.)

Why do people use these filters? Well, the answer lies in the past. Things from the past are generally perceived as being somewhat magical. Your grandmothers typewriter? Cool. Great-aunt-Bertha's vintage record player? Cool. So if we just make all of our photos look aged, then it logically follows that they will be more authentic and interesting. But the problem is that the majority of Instagrammers weren't even alive in the era they're trying to portray. A picture of your Macbook Air (circa 2011) made to look like a Polaroid (circa 1974) does not add any artistic value whatsoever. These filters are a very lazy habit to get into. Most of the photos on instagram are of feet, food, and coffee. (No, seriously.) If I showed you an untouched photo of my foot or my plate of scrambled eggs, you'd just give me a bored look and continue with your life. But if I do something to those photos to make them look more interesting (such as slapping a filter on them) then suddenly they grab your attention! Except for one thing: They look identical to all of the other 4,000,000 photos of feet and scrambled eggs on instagram. These are ruined photos. They don't capture a moment. They have no character. Their only flaws were put there on purpose. I'll tell you what: If you take a photo of your coffee mug, print it out, and leave it in the desert for 19 years, and then retrieve it and display it with all its scratches and sun-bleaching, then you've made a piece of art. Just like using paint-by-numbers doesn't make you a painter, using Instagram does not make you an artist.

Another reason you shouldn't use Instagram if you claim to be an artist is licensing. With the recent changes to Instagram's terms of service, any photo posted can be saved and used for commercial purposes. That's right: You own the photos, but you have no rights to them. So if a company wants to take the photo you took of your hamburger and use it for profit, there's nothing to stop them. It's legal, and you won't get a penny for your "work".

Are there alternatives to destroying your photos with faux-character and mass-produced authenticity? Yes. Yes there are. For starters, if you'd like to create nostalgia in your photos, then you should do absolutely nothing to them. Sure, your eight-megapixel iPhone camera looks great right now, but in 15 years your kids are gonna laugh at how grainy and low quality the images are. That's real nostalgia. 

Changing the color of a photo of an everyday object such as a coffee mug does not make it unique. The only way to create truly unique photos is to take pictures of truly unique subjects, or use interesting techniques in your photography. That's a unique-ness that Instagram simply can't replace.

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Les Misérables

It took me forever to get that little slashy thingy above the "e". I hope you appreciate it. I'm here to review the movie Les Misérables which I saw last night.

I'm not going to go into the plot much at all in this review. Let me just give a basic outline: Jean Valjean is a convict, he gets let out on parole, becomes a new person when he tears up his papers, and befriends a poor factory worker, caring for her daughter after she dies.

The beginning of the movie wasted no time diving right into it, I almost felt like it was moving too fast to make an emotional connection with the main character. They make up for that, however, by  the fact that the movie is really long. It's over three hours. The rating is PG-13, although quite honestly I would have given it an "R" rating. The fact is that certain suggestive themes are unavoidable parts of the story. To omit them would be to ruin the whole point of the plot. The factory worker, Fantine, gets fired from her job. After selling her hair and some of her teeth, she adopts... Another profession. There are two or three scenes in connection with that where you will find an excellent opportunity to go refill your popcorn. Yes, they were an integral part of the story, however they could have been done much more tactfully. That's Hollywood.

This movie is an emotional one, and it will wring the tears out of your eyes. One interesting fact is that all of the singing was actually recorded live, rather than dubbed over. The songs were great and I still have "Can you hear the people sing" stuck in my head. I especially enjoyed Daniel Huttlestone's performance as the young revolutionary Gavroche. He also played the same character in the Broadway production of Les Miserables.

Overall, I think this was a great film, stunted slightly by the several explicit scenes. This is not a family film, so parental discretion is advised required.


Just remember to bring tissues.

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Dancing

I've tried to dance. I'm not really good at it. I made a few illustrations to demonstrate:

In this picture, I'm standing still. I retain a slight "cool" factor in this manner. I'm not making a fool of myself in this picture. However, in the next picture, I am at a dance. I am attempting to dance. Note the fact that I am in motion, and thus making a fool of myself. The cool lights and cool fog don't mask this fact.

However, I can in fact retain the cool factor when in motion, as long as I am not attempting to adhere to any sort of rhythm. I can walk and still look cool. I can swim and look cool, in a drowning sort of way. I drive a car and look cool (although that depends greatly on what kind of car I'm in.) However when rhythm is applied, the cool factor drops to practically nonexistent. Here's a chart showing what I mean:

Note how the amount of movement increases dramatically as I realize how low the cool factor is sinking. This then causes the cool factor to bottom out altogether. I suppose the best strategy is to avoid high levels of rhythm altogether.

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