Donning the Raven

My friend Shiloh had a "Who's your doppleganger in an alternate universe?" costume party this weekend. The now-11 year old and I drove North to Montreal to be there for it. I figured, though, that if we were going to drive 3+ hours for one overnight to attend a costume party, I'd better fully commit to a costume of extravagant fantasy. So, I went dressed as a Shape Shifting Raven in the guise of a woman.

My friend and hair dresser Andrea Harrison did an AMAZING job with my hair. First, here are pics of the hair she designed for me after I described the feel, and character I was going for. She's wonderful!




The hair with feather collar to accent Andrea's great work...



Here's some pics of the costume and makeup. My friend Pam Wilkinson made the incredible cape. Unfortunately, there aren't any full length photos of the cape from the back, but you can see it in the outside pic, where I'm sitting down, and draped off the arms in the standing indoor picture.

Hair by Andrea Harrison
Rubber Dress Atsuko Kudo, Cape Pam Wilkinson, Feather Collar Love Child Boudoir, Skull Hell Angel Ring Alexander McQueen, Shoulder Chain Harness LitterSF, Violet and Sterling Gray Colored Contacts

OPEN REQUEST GOING OUT TO PETYA!!!

Petya, what mascara did you recommend again?!! Please to respond.

Planning a Costume

I have various costuming events coming up in the next couple of weeks. One of them is a costume party at a friend's house this weekend. The other is, of course, Halloween. I've got concepts/characters figured out for both occasions. The trick now is thinking through the details and making choices about the primary pieces of a costume; that is, will I wear a dress? If so, what dress? Or, perhaps pants and a shirt? Once the main pieces are chosen, then the accessories, hair style, and makeup all get chosen as well. I'm still in the midst of this part of the process, though I have a lot of ideas.

Sometimes, admittedly, I don't start with the main pieces at all. Sometimes I just know I want to wear a particular color, or that the clothes I want to wear will express a particular way I want to feel, or occasionally there is even just one accessory I want to design the whole outfit around. The other thing I try to think about when designing a costume is avoiding the obvious. So, for example, sometimes one particular style of dress will easily call up an overall look--maybe a style of dressing from a particular time period, or a certain sort of iconic image. As much as is possible, I try and work against that obvious choice, while also seeing that there are times when you have to just accept the obvious, go with it, and simply play it a little different than others have before.

Below are pics of some of the various costumery items I'm currently choosing from.

Rubber Dress custom made for me by Atsuko Kudo

YSL TributeToo Black Patent Pumps

Leather Lacing Harness by AudraJean
(the entire front laces up to the neck, sorry this detail is obscured by the black t-shirt)

Taffeta cape custom made for me by Pam Wilkinson

I don't know that I'll wear all of these costume elements, and I have other accessories that will be worked into the ensemble as well. But these are pics of some of the basics I'm considering. Your thoughts are welcomed!

Chilean Miners Rescued. So Grateful.

Letter To The Now-11 Year Old On Her Birthday

Dear R*****,

Your mother wrote letting me know it is your birthday, asking if I might have a message for you on your day. Congratulations on turning 11! Totally cool. I hope you have awesome plans with your friends at school and later with your family. 11 was one of my funnest years. I hope you love fifth grade too. Aren't you learning the best stuff?

I've been lucky getting to do what I love. Remember you can choose that too--what is it that you love? Live big this year. Be sure you listen to your mom, but remember she loves you and you can talk through stuff together, even when she doesn't like your taste in music. laugh.

Wishing you a super awesome year!
S*****

p.s. Enclosed is a photo that is kind of embarrassing, but your mom thought you'd appreciate seeing that I'm really a regular person. xxoo --S

The World's Biggest Ridiculous Stuff!

This summer turned out to be one of seeing a whole bunch of American pride as offered through very hard work put into the creation and preservation of The World's Largest (Insert Unexpected Random Object Name Here). Below is a list of the experience.

1. The World's Largest Mother Mary Sculpture, 90 feet high,
aka., "Our Lady of the Rockies" Butte, Montana, USA


As story has it, a devoted husband was suffering under the horrible reality of watching his wife struggle with cancer. Afraid she would die before her time, the man prayed to god to save her life. In exchange, he promised, he would build a 9-ft tall statue of Mother Mary to place in his yard. Miraculously, his wife did recover. To thank god for the miracle, he sought out fulfilling his promise with the help of a neighbor. With six years, a whole lot of concrete, and the help of an Air National Guard helicopter, the statue turned into a 90-ft showcase along the continental divide reachable by bus in the summer.

2. The World's Largest Masonry Structure, 585 ft high
aka., The Anaconda Smoke Stack, Anaconda, Montana, USA


Montana held the largest mining facility in the world at the end of the 1800's. The mining work continued well into the end of the last century too. The ore extracted from Butte was brought to an enormous underground smelting facility that contained too an intricate web of ceiling pipes, all designed to funnel the fumes to one central location and then out into the open air through one enormous smoke stack. After the smelting facility closed the underground portion was demolished and closed, but when it was announced the smoke stack would suffer the same consequences the local population rose up in protest. The smoke stack then was turned into a state park, and is even featured in the multi-colored scenes of local church's stained glass.

3. The World's Largest Kokopelli Sculpture, 32 ft tall
Camp Verde, Arizona, USA

The Southwest is irritatingly full of Kokopelli references. There is even, I am told, an unfortunately named Colon care center named something like "Colonpelli" complete with a company logo that makes the human colon look like a flute playing Kokopelli. The largest Kokopelli sculpture sits amidst another Southwestern classic--the truck stop.

4. The World's Largest Hercules Beetle, 17 ft long, 9 ft tall
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA


Outside a privately owned Space Exploration Museum, and just past an enormous army compound rests the World's Largest Hercules Beetle. It overlooks a small highway from atop a small hill that must be climbed to stand near it. Apparently, this sculpture was built in 1945, and welcomes visitors into another attraction next to the Space Exploration Info Center--a bug museum. The center also hosts a campground and strongly now advertises itself as a wifi hotspot.

5. The World's Largest High Wheel Bicycle, 14 ft tall
Calhan, Colorado, USA


The tallest high wheel bicycle sits within a privately owned RV campground that also hosts sculptures of various animals, and a bevy of antique cadillacs. You enter around back of an enormous antique store, and across from a restaurant that is part of the same compound. If you just want to walk on the grounds to view the bike, ask for Jack.

6. The World's Largest Spur, 27 ft high
Abilene, Kansas, USA

The entrance to the fairgrounds is this enormous spur. When the fair isn't happening, the poor thing sits on vacant property. Yee hah.

7. The World's Largest Wren, 1200 pounds
Topeka, Kansas, USA


Apparently the wren welcomed visitors to the local radio statio in the middle of the last century. Eventually it became part of the cities sculpture project and rests now in the middle of a small park. Topeka hosts a number of enormous sculptures both in the middle of town, and on the local college campus.

8. The World's Largest Painted Russian Egg, 6.5 ft high
Topeka, Kansas


See? Another enormous sculpture. This giant painted Russian Egg was apparently part of the celebrations for an enormous russian painted egg museum exhibition from several years ago.


9. The World's Largest Shuttlecocks, 18 ft tall
Kansas City, Missouri, USA

In the midst of an enormous and amazing museum. Blahblah rich guy commissioned them. Blahblah. Ironically, when we visited the sculptures there was a sandwich wagon feeding homeless people on the edge of the museum grounds.

10. The World's Largest Cap Gun
Kansas City, Missouri, USA

This is in the weirdest middle of no where location of all the sculptures spotted. Interestingly enough there were also a bunch of guys intentionally dressed as hoodlums hanging out underneath the cap gun. I couldn't tell you why.

11. The World's Largest Ketchup Bottle, 1 million gallons
Collinsville, Illinois, USA

It was dark. She's cute. It's way up off the ground. There is no way to get in close. So, we did this.

12. The World's Largest Cross, 198 ft tall
Effingham, Illinois, USA

Honestly. What else do you want to know about this one?

13. The World's Largest Gavel
Columbus, Ohio, USA

Being Angry and Being Bigger than the Anger Too

The 10-year old I live with turns 11 tomorrow, or, as she called it, "prime." Tomorrow she turns prime. Tomorrow is also a school day though. But, today in the States is a national holiday, which meant she didn't have school on a Monday. As a result, we decided we'd do her birthday celebration today.

The truth is we don't know people well enough in our new locale to include anyone local in the intimacy of a birthday celebration, so we decided to have a day of just the two of us doing things she'd enjoy. We started by driving to the neighboring little town (only 10 minutes away) for brunch. The joke was we were going to have cake for breakfast and cake for dinner. So, after eating our brunch items, we finished with a triple chocolate torte.

We then drove to a toy store and found four rubber snakes that will be fashioned into a medusa headpiece for her "Rock and Roll Medusa" Halloween costume later this month. Then we decided to head to Boston to walk around in a city, and take a chance at finding a skirt she's been looking for to finish off a different costume. The area we live in is only small towns, so it can be hard to find specific items.

We walked around Boston, found the skirt, and took time in a cupcake shop where we each ate a Red Velvet cupcake as the dinner-time birthday cake. Then we drove back north to our own town. After arriving at home again we watched a show together to tie off the day before bed.

In the midst of all this it turned out she'd decided she wanted me to cut her hair so that she could start her 11th year with a brand new haircut for school. The thing was, I didn't know this, and by the time we made it home there wasn't time. So, I apologized and said it would have to wait till tomorrow. The trouble there, of course, is waiting till tomorrow means waiting till the end of her school day, thereby blowing her "start the new year" timing entirely. For the still-10 year old, this was a complete blow to her mood.

Within fifteen minutes the usually super insightful, well grounded kid that I'm used to had collapsed into crying and telling me we'd just had the worst day ever. I responded by telling her it was time to go to sleep, that I knew she'd feel better after, and good night. This escalated things temporarily, until I again walked out of the room thoroughly pissed, though staying calm, telling her I'd see her in the morning. By the end of this exchange I wanted time to myself to unwind again, and let go of her comment about it being the worst day ever, knowing she was just mouthing off in that moment. But, instead of getting that time to myself her crying shifted and she started calling to me again saying she just needed a hug, and she didn't want her 10th year to end without one.

Dear lord.

In the face of a comment like that, there is nothing to do but be bigger than your anger and walk back out to go hold the crying one for a bit to help her feel better. Cause she's right. Ending your 10th year without a hug sucks.

So, I did it. Still angry, I focused on the rest of my feelings, which are worlds of affection for her, and walked back out to give her a hug and hold onto her for a bit. She finally calmed down again, and from what I can tell is now asleep.

Here's the thing though, I've realized that kind of moment is something a lot of people don't get enough practice with--that moment of HAVING TO BE bigger than your feelings for the sake of what's right, or for the sake of a desire that is bigger than the upset of the moment. I mean, any of us could get that practice. Life is certainly offering it all the time. But there are people I've known that seem instead to be victims to their feelings more often than not, acting because of how they feel--their heart got hard so they walked away in the middle of a difficult conversation (a friend told me a story like that one time), or they were embarrassed so instead of apologizing for something they avoided a person, or they were angry so they shut down to seeing how vulnerable some friend of theirs actually felt and yelled instead. Insert whatever variation of such behavior here--behavior that comes simply out of choosing to act out of ones feelings alone without sense of or commitment to values bigger than those feelings.

In the last year, through lots of conversations with the still-10 year old where we talk about how to manage our feelings and relationships in healthy ways, I've come to describe this process as "being bigger than our feelings" as "choosing for the sake of something more important than how upset we are."

Aristotle describes genuine friendship, or relationship with another, as occurring when two people desire for each other, and also act in such a way that reflects what is truly good for the other person. That is, each person is so virtuous they can (1) recognize the big picture of the other person's life, and (2) act in such a way as to support that big picture, even when it isn't exactly convenient, or conducive to whatever feelings might be there in the immediate. Hugging someone that is upset even when you're angry with them seems a good example of that sort of virtue.

I don't mean to claim that I am consistently such a virtuous person. I screw up all the time. Instead, I just want to recognize the importance of this sort of idea--choosing to act for the sake of something bigger than ourselves, and bigger than our feelings--for the sake of healthy relationships, and well-balanced lives. It can be so easy to make a mistake in the face of these moments--to feel upset and take it as a sign that walking away from the other person either in the immediate, or longer term, is the right thing to do. Our culture, it seems, often acts as though feeling happy, or feeling good is the continual goal. There certainly are times when it is necessary, or right, to walk away from a situation either to just calm down enough to behave well, or because that other person really isn't good for you. And being happy is surely a valued thing. In the midst of such understanding though it seems too that there are times when pushing a little harder to be big enough to act for the sake of making a situation better, and helping the other person suffering through a challenge is not only the right thing to do, but the thing that's going to help ones self too.

As a different sort of example, the still-ten year old and I talked through what activity she could start to practice through her 11th year as part of her overall birthday celebration. Because of what is available in the area we now live, and also because of her love for animals, we realized that taking horseback riding lessons would be that new activity. So, she has just started going once a week to learn how to ride a horse.

The thing about horseback riding is that it's frickin' scary. The horse is huge. When she's in trot she's bouncing you around everywhere, and it can be hard sometimes to balance and hang on. The other thing about it is it's cold. Living this much further north means there is already a chill in the air. The other thing about it is it's inconvenient--you have to brush the horse before you can ride her, you have to care for the tack after you ride her, and also clean her off again, and you've gotta walk around in mud and poop and horse pee while getting bothered by flies. All of that stuff is stuff no one would want to put up with, except that it's all part of this bigger goal of having time with the horse and getting better at riding her.

The truth is--this is the real reason I decided to go along with the still-10 year old taking horseback riding lessons for her 11th year--because doing so would be this great practice for exactly what we're talking about--being bigger than her various feelings of fear, or apprehension, or laziness, or anger, or insert-whatever-is-appropriate-and-likely-here. She wants to have time with animals. She loves this horse she's only just met, and she wants to get good at riding it. Doing that though means suffering through sore legs and gut muscles while she learns how to balance and deal with the trot. It means having to calm herself enough to tune into what the horse is doing whether the ten-year old is nervous, scared, angry, tired, or whatever. It also means having to clean up stuff she wouldn't have reason to touch otherwise. It means she gets to practice being bigger than the discomfort and the inconvenience, for the sake of her own larger interests, and for the sake of the horse itself too. Because all these things are integral to proper care for the animal she's developing an affection for. But they are also integral to her having a healthy ability to care for herself--learning that she has so much power she can choose what she wants for herself; that her freedom and ability to have a life she wants and enjoys actually comes from recognizing her various limitations of fear and apprehension and even laziness, and choosing to act in a way that shows she's bigger than them anyway.

The Dread Pirate Roberts, Prawns, Mushrooms, and Personal Growth

The thing about moving is that there are SO MANY things to miss due to leaving life in the previous locale, that you don't usually realize all the various individual things missed, and instead just feel an overall malaise of loss, a kind of sedative on the excitement or interest of the new place.

This has been true for me. That it's not been particular things about my previous locale that I long for, but just an overall feeling of having let go of a lot. Interestingly, this has led to me feeling very particular longings for things that have nothing whatsoever to do with my previous place of residence, as if I either need to miss SOMETHING specific and so have latched onto particular things I've lost that aren't even current, or that because of being open in general to recognizing that I've let go of a lot through moving, I am now also open to being aware of other things I've let go of outside of the move.

Here's my main example of this odd phenomenon of my missing things.


Shrimp.

For the last two weeks I have been really really painfully missing shrimp. I am craving prawns more intensely than I can even describe, and, strangely, I've also been seeing them everywhere. The thing is, I'm allergic to prawns. I haven't been able to eat them without getting sick for a few years now, so WHY THE HECK AM I SUDDENLY DYING WITHOUT THEM??

I honestly think that in the midst of periods of our life where we suffer so much change, everything is up for reconsideration. And so here I am revisiting my former grief over discovering I couldn't eat one of my favorite foods anymore.

My sister Paula is allergic to mushrooms. She discovered this at least 15 years ago now, but after having lived a life obsessed with them. Mushrooms were her absolute favorite thing, and she regularly worked them into meals that wouldn't have had them otherwise, and when no one else present was eating them. Then, after both blood and skin-swab allergy testing, the doctor confirmed that she wasn't allowed to eat them anymore because of what they'd do to her body. So, without even one last mushroom meal, she gave them up cold turkey. The disappointment of that is something I've reflected on a lot over the last several years--just wondering what it must have been like for her, without actually wanting to ask because of how doing so would bring up thoughts of the very thing she has to avoid.

Both my parents are also allergic to prawns--allergies that developed in adulthood. It hit my father at least a decade prior to my mother. For years after my dad would sneak a few with dinner when we were out to eat, even though doing so would cause his tongue to swell and mouth to get itchy. He would tell me that he figured if he only ate a couple he'd be fine.

About 10 years ago my dad met a good friend of mine for the first time the morning after my parents and I had gone to a restaurant for dinner. My dad had again snuck prawns into his meal but this time ate more than his usual "just a couple." The next day when he met my friend his face was hugely round from swelling due to his allergy. His tongue was a little heavy too, but he could breathe fine so he never bothered to see a doctor. After a few minutes of laborious struggle to talk with my friend over his swollen tongue and achy face, my dad finally admitted to her that he didn't usually look or sound like this but he'd eaten prawns the night before.

Wide eyed, my friend asked him if my dad had known before the dinner that he couldn't eat prawns. He responded to her that he did with a nod. "Then, why'd you do it?" she asked him. "Why'd you eat prawns if you knew they would do this to you?"

He looked at her and answered simply, "Because, I love them." he said.

She laughed.

I'd forgotten entirely about that brief exchange until this recent summer when she retold the story to a friend I was traveling with. She told him the story because she wanted him to know this of my parents in case he ever met them, but also as some sort of insight into how to better understand me.

"I was so impressed." She said. "I thought. Wow. I'm standing next to people that see what poisons them and ingests it anyway. Not to die, but to have their love and be stronger."

Her perspective had never occurred to me. I'd just figured my dad was being either stubborn, or ridiculous by eating the prawns. Reliving the image of my dad's swollen face, I can't claim I'm going to go out and fulfill my shrimp craving as he did. But I am interested in thinking on this idea--that somehow there can be a very human intersection of those three things--poison, love, and strength--that sometimes they exist together, and perhaps even demand each other. That the only way to be true to what you are passionate for, and so to who you genuinely are, sometimes might demand striking a very careful balance with what could seem a kind of poison, but when ingested rightly out of a commitment to love could actually give you strength.

Too much poison, you end up dead or uncomfortably swollen. Not enough, you're left in a kind of stasis of never demanding enough of yourself. Ingested in balance with care, and, like Wesley as the Dread Pirate Roberts, you gain strengths you couldn't have had otherwise.

Living Your Own Right Life

To more concisely represent what the heck I meant with my post from yesterday, xkcd comes in handy.

Behold!

The Thing About Relocating Is It Makes All Too Clear What Is Truly Important

"Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend." --Plautus


"The only way to have a friend is to be one." --Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Friends are needed both for joy and for sorrow." --Samuel Paterson


"We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need." --Epicurus

"But it is natural that such friendship should be infrequent, for such people are rare." --Aristotle


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A Life Fully Lived With Fashion and Costume

People often talk about the idea of having too much focus on clothing, or concern with appearance as simply superficial. There is of course a version of being worried about ones appearance that easily would seem to fall within such a category of lacking depth. My thought though is that even in these cases the way one treats their appearance reflects a deeper sense of the person, how they understand themselves, how they see what is possible for their lives, and whether they're able to establish a sense of balance between themselves and the world, or if they might be disjointed. Chasing trends, for example, could be seen to reflect a desire to fit in, or an interest in what's hip and new. Varying ones costume regularly could be understood as an exploration not only of how one expresses themselves, but also of what it is possible for a person to express. How we get dressed operates as a site of intersection and potential transformation of the social norms we seem to be given, and the creativity that is our own. That is, how are any of us as individuals going to negotiate those norms? We cannot simply escape them. But can we play them differently than how they've simply been shown to us?

Admittedly, some of us do not want to care to any large degree about what we wear. We have a certain range or even set of clothing that make us comfortable, and that is what we intend to stick with. Even here, I claim, such a person is expressing a particular understanding of themselves, and how they want to be in the world, as well as of how they expect that world will likely interact with them. It is simply a perspective they might more readily take for granted than the people that focus daily on their costume. There are many people too though that are well aware of their appearance and manage to present themselves with fine balance and choice of how they dress as well, and yet would not seem to greatly vary it, being comfortable, again, in a particular sort of range that just might be more tended to than the people that have one exact type of clothing they stick to.

Then there are those that vary their attire regularly, and manage to live brilliantly within such variation. One of the people I most admire for such ability is Vogue Nippon's editor Anna Dello Russo. Interestingly enough, I didn't like her look when I first came upon her. She even somehow almost bugged me. As I've continued to follow her various looks during fashion weeks, however, her passion for dressing and expressing herself, and her brilliant congruence with her job as editor of a serious fashion magazine is something I greatly admire. It would seem she's stepped into a version of living an expression of the life right for her that verges on the divine. You see, I'm not convinced that there is only one, or even only a few, versions of what it means to live a good life. Instead, I'm convinced that individuals must work hard, with dedication, perserverance, and a hell of a lot of passionate joy to discover and create the good life that is right for them.

If we allow for people to stand as representations of the iconic, then I would claim that what we can see of Anna Dello Russo's life represents just such a sense of divine expression. True, I don't know the details of her individual person. But that isn't here what I am talking about. In the iconic sense, what we see of her is a woman that lives in full commitment to the life she has--editor of a major fashion magazine, passionately expressing and creating the enormous range she sees offered through the art of clothing and accoutrement.

Here are a few images of her showcasing such brilliance.

As one final comment here, I think she too shows how what it truly means to capture and live in such brilliance and beauty is no straightforward, or singular thing. (And for real finally: notice too how if you really take up what she is doing, she makes the question of "do I like what she's wearing" completely irrelevant. Simple notions of "like" having nothing to do with this reality. Finally finally: notice too, she never wears any makeup. Interesting, isn't it, considering assumptions often made about superficiality, and dedication to appearance.)

image by Tommy Ton

image by Tommy Ton

image by Garance Dore

image by Tommy Ton

image by the Sartorialist

image by Tommy Ton

And finally, her mind blowing extravaganza for the recent masquerade in Paris hosted by Carine Roitfeld at Karl Lagerfield's famous apartment.

image by Tommy Ton

Costume Inspiration

As some of you know, I like costuming. I like the challenge of developing a detailed and cohesive presentation of an idea--of thinking through the abstract ideas behind the character, and then figuring out how that persona would appear in actual concrete details. Currently I'm working through what I might want to wear and be for an upcoming costume party, as well as for the classic October costume holiday, Halloween. Here's some pics from costumes I've had in the last couple of years.

A Philosopher's Dream: The Sense Datum

Communist Costume Party: Chairman Meow

A Dark Angel: Dark Doesn't Mean Bad

For the upcoming costumery all I've got sorted out so far is the following: a series of aesthetic images and feelings, as represented by the following pics.

feather wing machine, by rebecca horn
i like the combination of organic and mechanical; sculptural nature

legolas
androgynous bad ass; interesting other worldly effect

givenchy couture, a/w 2010
again, interesting combinations here--bad ass over the top couture chic

Halloween River Harvest

image from the Keene Sentinel

The drive between the town I live in, and another town just twenty minutes south takes drivers alongside the Connecticut river. Just before a turn in the road there is a dam designed merely as a waterfall containment. Last week the area was inundated with rain; as a result debris that had been along the shore of the river was washed into the water and caught up just before the dam.

Driving along the river earlier today, I passed the waterfall area and noticed a ton of large branches, and small trees caught up in the containment system. Then I realized that, oddly, there was also a wealth of floating orange debris. Caught off guard I couldn't sort out what the orange bobbing objects could be at first.

It turned out up river the Newmont Pumpkin Farm in Vermont rests right alongside the Connecticut River. Over 100,000 pumpkins had been picked and were ready to be transported to the Keene Pumpkin Festival in Cheshire County Vermont when it started raining. In the midst of rising flood waters most of those 100,000 pumpkins were washed away. Apparently, 4000 of them washed up on one shore of the river on the New Hampshire side of the river's route. Then the rest continued to float down stream with many of them getting caught up with the dam system.

Some people have plucked pumpkins out of the river and sent money on to the Newmont Pumpkin Farm to help make up for the loss. Amazingly the farm has enough pumpkins left on field that they expect to be able to still supply the annual pumpkin festival. In the meantime, the Connecticut River is floating orange.

image from WMUR New Hampshire

Surprises in the System

Everyone in the college that I reside at this year received an email that Google maps will be on campus today gathering images for their street view feature. As you are no doubt aware, the mapping site operates so that you can type in a location and then, in order to get a better sense of what to expect at the address, select to view it via google's street view feature. Upon doing so the site will zoom in on real recorded images taken by a special google car (in some cases the camera was mounted on a bicycle, believe it or not) rolling slowly down the street that you're now viewing on your computer. Google has organized a massive worldwide effort to systematically drive down and record every street in the world for this program. There are a few cases, in the Czech Republic, for example, where an area has refused to allow google to pursue the process. The reasons, apparently, are based in questions of privacy.

For those places where google has successfully pursued the effort, you can get a real picture of the place you're exploring. However, there are a ton of instances embedded into the system of really surprising and ridiculous images casually recorded as normal everyday realities for the address being viewed. Some of the pictures have been made through people intentionally acting out in response to the camera, while others are accidental records made by the internet system. I have a fantasy that someone on campus here is organizing to intentionally insert such a rebellion into google maps.

Following are some examples from google maps street view feature that crack me up. (All images really found in google maps street view feature.)

Imagine it: You're in the Ozarks and decide you'd like to go see your friend in Arkansas. While making sure you know what the neighborhood the barbecue is in looks like you happen upon this:

Or, this:


In Australia:

The story I have since found online is that this guy was actually drunkenly passed out and got captured by the cameras.

In France:


In Brazil:


And finally, two of my favorites from Ireland (though the first image is also admittedly sad).

Imagine it. You're planning a trip to the Irish countryside and need the best route to that stone church you read so much about, and while getting a sense of what the drive will look like you come upon these: