For a while now I’ve been really faking my confidence with photography. Manly Man always says if it’s something you don’t think you can do, just pretend you can. So I’ve been pretending and along with all this pretending I guess I started learning stuff. How did that happen?

I still find myself out in the trenches taking pictures of kids, families and couples thinking “do these people realize I am just imitating a photographer and that I’m not actually a photographer?” I find myself confused and lost and wondering every single time I’m doing a shoot that I’m going to totally fuck this up. I’m going to take horrible pictures and the clients are going to be really pissed.

Then I come home. I download all the pictures off my camera. Sometimes I peak but often I wait until the next day to see how much I screwed it up. The next day I force myself to sit and look through the pictures and I find myself thinking “did I really take these pictures?”

Then this weekend, suddenly out of nowhere, I had real confidence about my pictures.

Ok so I am not bursting at the seems about my photography. I don’t think I’m the best there is or that I’m the next Annie Lebowitz or anything. In fact I still have a lot of fear and anxiety about the entire thing. I still don’t know where I’m going with it all.

But dam, I got some good shots.

Pictures by Accidental Beauty Photography.

When I think sometimes about what we went through to have that big wedding and how much easier it would have been to scrap that plan I think we wouldn’t have all those memories. Plus, I always enjoy seeing you in a tux

Happy 2 year wedding anniversary.

You’re married now so you can kiss
But please make sure you do not miss!

I hate this time of years. Yeah the weather is better and there are trees full bloom but then also all my shows end for the year. I am not a fan of this, if I could I would have my shows go all year long and never end. But they must happen, I suppose, so here are my thoughts if you care.

Desperate Housewives: The show has taken desperate to a whole new level. I don’t care like I used to but I will most likely watch it until the end now that I’m invested. It’s a damn good thing I don’t have to pay for each show separately.

House: I really expected a cliff hanger, like they usually do and it just kind of whimpered at the end. I mean in one way it was sweet and had to happen eventually but it was just too easy and had so little umph to it. At the very least if you are going to go that direction I want it to knock my socks off. You know?

Modern Family: It was funny, that’s all I expect from them and I got that in spades.

Cougar Town: I think they got her together with that guy (too lazy to look up his name) too quickly, just my opinion but then I’m from the Rachel and Ross generation (did I just say that?).

How I Met Your Mother: Was I the only one who cringed every time Lily said “put a baby in my belly?” Please, don’t put anything in my belly but cheesecake and bagels. Oh and am I the only one totally excited to actually see Barney’s doppelganger?

Two and a Half Men: I simply just don’t care anymore, which makes me sad because I really used to love this show and it’s jumped the shark.

The Big Bang Theory: I’m loving the Mayim Bialik (Blossom) storyline and I love that they are both asexual. That is the only way any kind of romantic pair-up will work for me with Sheldon.

I feel like I’m missing a finale but I can’t think of what it would be. I am looking forward to my summer shows like Mad Men, Weeds and maybe My Boys…if that is even still around.

Now I need a new show for the summer and am taking suggestions. Im thinking maybe The Mentalist or Breaking Bad or maybe something like NCIS. Maybe we’ll try them all out. No, I don’t want to watch It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia. I can just tell from a mile away this is not my kind of show.

Can we move on now?

It is better to be told a hurtful truth than to be told a comforting lie. In the end, the truth will make its way out and will hurt much more than it ever had to. ~Anonymous

The truth hurts really bad. I know, I’ve had many hurtful truths said to me over the years. It never gets easier. Someone sits you down or writes you an email and you can feel it in your stomach. It’s like the air is sucked out of you and all you can feel is the reality that is laid out before you. It’s like everything else in the world goes black and these words are in neon.

Still, I find the truth, even when it’s almost too painful to hear, so much better than a lie. No matter how much I am hurt by how you really feel what hurts that much more is to realize that I’m not worth taking the time to be honest. Being the person who has to hand over the truth is never easy but it’s what the person deserves. I think we all know that in telling the truth you take the chance in the person not wanting to hear it and resenting you for it, that is not an easy situation to put yourself in.

I crave truth, I never turn any of it away no matter how false or hurtful I think it is. I always take it, think about it and try to process it. I try not to dwell on it but sometimes that’s just inevitable…or maybe that’s just part of my DNA. I don’t think enough people are honest. I’m not nearly as honest as I would like to be but that’s mostly because I don’t think most people have any interest in the truth. Most of the time when I try to be honest it ends up in a fight.

I think what has hurt me the most is finding out the truth has been kept from me for a long period of time and then when it finally leaks out I feel like I was run over by a truck. Like when someone says “we all think” makes you realize that apparently you’ve been discussing what you believe to be a truth about me with others and are now letting me in on this. It’s “truths” like that I can’t help but wonder if they are not even real but just put out there to sting.

I also want to point out that I believe sometimes a white lie is what is best for the situation. I just believe as a society too many of us are afraid of the truth and that it can be a destructive route. For me, it’s important to be able to see the good and bad of both ourselves and the world around us or else we are missing out on so much.

How much do you avoid the truth? If someone sat you down right now and told you how they really felt could you handle it without getting defensive? What kind of life do we have without facing the truth?

I’ve said before that I was bullied on and off for years. It’s traumatizing and you never really get over it. The worst of it for me was the sexual harassment I had to endure and I considered suicide several times. Did I ever go so far to take my own life or anyone else? No, but I can empathize where they came from. I had my moments where I wished that those that continually tortured me would just die.

Nobody wants to take responsibility for this but the new way to handle things is to blame someone else. I heard that the teens that bullied and raped Phoebe are upset because they are being threatened. I’m sorry but, karma IS a BITCH and in this world you have to pay for your actions. Until you yourself have been bullied for days, weeks and months on end you can never know what it feels like. I can’t imagine what kind of soul can do that to another person.

I feel very fortunate that back when I was bullied in school there was no such thing as cyber bullying because I’m pretty sure that could have pushed me over the edge. I can’t imagine, not ever being to escape it, not even at home.

I’m not a parent but please talk to your kids about how to treat others and to speak up if anyone is being mean to them. I think many kids are too embarrassed or just don’t think their parents would understand. Just reading this article about one of the parents who insists her daughter isn’t to blame makes me want to vomit. As a country we need to start taking responsibility for our actions.

RIP Phoebe Prince.

Our show last night on Off Topic actually stayed pretty much on topic for the first time. I mean, not completely on topic the entire time but if we did that we wouldn’t be Off Topic now would we? Last night we talked about Swearing but in reality it may have been more about censorship and a dash of serial killers (ps more on that later).

I thought of this subject due to the recent hissy fits Americans are having over the vice president saying the word fuck. Mind you he did not openly say this to the cameras, it was a side thing. He was also not saying it in a derogatory way or trying to be offensive. It was just a moment between him and the president.

What annoys me the most about people being all uppity about swearing is those who make it such a big deal are the ones putting the most stock in these words. Yes, they are in fact just words. They only mean as much as you want them to mean. Is every word out of my mouth a swear? No, but most of the time I don’t hold back unless you know I’m at a nice restaurant or at work.

I wouldn’t even say I have a “potty mouth” or anything. You won’t see me babbling on about sexual escapades or penis size or anything. I just don’t see the big deal about the words fuck or shit or cock. In general, I just think people need to chill the fuck out. I believe everyone swears, even if it’s just when they are alone in their car.

ps. We swore a lot less than usual this episode, go figure.

pss. Here is the review of the movie I mentioned in the show.

psss. Next show, in 2 weeks, will be about serial killers.

Download Podcast

I won’t say clique because I’ve never been in one and I never will, not in high school and not know. I did however realize that maybe, at times, even people that have children might feel left out by the childfree and how we tend to bond together.

Still, this just seems strange to me as I’ve always felt left out by the parents all over the interweb. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hear someone talking about their kids or posting pictures of their kids or whatever. I get that this is how society is and I’m fine with it and if ever I’m annoyed by it I just ignore it.

I know that when I talk about my cats as my children there are eye rolls by parents all over the internet and that they think I’m an idiot. I’m ok with that too because it’s a given, most people don’t consider pets to be children. I don’t happen to agree but you know, that’s how the world works.

As I get older I realize I’m more and more secluded from the world of my friends, in another 5 years I assume I’ll have only a small handful of friends that don’t have kids. That’s one of the reasons I love being online, I have more people that get my situation and it makes me a happier person.

I’m not even a normal childfree, if that is even possible, because I consider myself “on the fence” until I make my final decision when I remove my IUD. Sometimes I think having a kid sounds kind of awesome but most of the time it just seems like the worst idea for me. There is more to my feelings than just not wanting to be a mother, there are outside factors, so many, that contribute to where I stand with this.

There will always be a line drawn between the childfree and the childfull (I just made that up) and there isn’t much we can do other than just learn from each other and maybe, when needed, just laugh off the differences. But in reality each side will never truly understand the other side, it’s impossible and it’s ok.

So I caught a little bit of the Duggars show on tv last night because I really am not annoyed by television enough most of the time. Every single time I watch this I can’t help but think, I know these kids are nicely brainwashed and all but one of them has to eventually start to think for themselves. I mean, it’s part of growing up, right?

I remember one time when I caught the show a while ago, sometimes there is nothing on and you get sucked into the insanity, and the daughter Jinger stood out to me. I remember that she didn’t seem to feel the need to have a truck load of kids like her parents and seemed to be kind of the black sheep of the family. I read online somewhere that when she admitted on screen not wanting to have kids for Jesus her family took her aside to talk to her and then when she was back on screen she was all about the family circus concept.

I don’t know how much of this is just online fodder, I mean there are so many sites called “Free Jinger” and I wonder how worried her family is about this or if with all their kids to tend to they really don’t notice. I always figure that with nearly 20 kids there is an even higher chance than most families that at least one child will break free of the heard and probably a good handful of them are gay, which I can only imagine wouldn’t work into the Duggar’s plan.

I was going to mention the Twitter account I found of hers until I really read it and I realized it was a fake. Damn fake twitters fool me everytime! Except Kevin Spacey, I knew all along he was real. Given that these kids are all sheltered from internet, tv and wearing jeans it isn’t surprising she doesn’t have a Twitter but that would be pretty awesome.

So now I will just sit back and wait for the shit to hit the Duggar family and Jinger gets either knocked up or starts her own reality show. It’s only a matter of time.

First off, I haven’t seen Avatar so I admit I am just speaking from what I’ve heard, and I’ve heard a lot.

I have no interest to see Avatar, at all. There are probably 10 movies in the theater I’d see before that movie and one of them is Alvin and The Chipmunks. Ok, that was a lie but they are pretty much in the same boat for me. I rarely do cartoons and this is, as far as I’m concerned, a cartoon.

It’s a well-known fact I don’t give a rats ass about special effects. Occasionally I’ll see a movie that has them but not because of the, usually for some other reason. Like The Day After Tomorrow, I saw that for Jake Gyllenhaal. Ok, so maybe that isn’t the world’s greatest reason to see a movie but it’s my money, shut up! Anyway I remember the scene with the tidal wave, that gave me chills.

I also saw Titanic, because I’m a sucker for a good romance and the story was interested, even if I knew how it ended. Plus, I might have seen it in the theater 4x but people kept dragging me back, it’s not my fault I was one of the first to see it on Christmas Eve. Anyway, my point was when the ship went down I could feel it down to my bones, it was amazing.

But Avatar, the plot is not enough to get me to see the movie and I need a plot or, you know, a cute guy at least. This movie plot has been done, SO MANY TIMES, and in so many fucking movies. I swear, if you listen closely while watching Avatar you can hear James Cameron snickering in the background.

You know what a great movie is to me?

Visually Beautiful: this does not mean CGI or whatever, I mean artistically beautiful. When I see a scene that could be made into a photograph, that’s beautiful. To me it’s about the right lighting, the right angles, the right editing, it’s not about computer generated images.

Strong Plot: I want something new or if you can’t do new at least give it to me in a way that it seems new, don’t just regurgitate all the other movies in existence.

I could go on, but I won’t, you get the point. Plus I didn’t have coffee this morning so I’ve now run out of steam.

If not, watch these. Also, go watch American Beauty or The Pianist or Once if you want to see a real film.