Snout Your Blessings

I can't stop sneezing today. I would say it is allergies, but I spent all day "in the bush" yesterday and only blasted out a few nostril bangs. Now I'm just sitting at my desk, but acting like a mucus loaded firing squad or a double barreled roman snot candle. Perhaps I'm allergic to comfortable surroundings. I'll try knocking one of the wheels off my chair and putting a pinhole leak in a pipe above my head. Water torture and perpetual imbalance should cure me of my sneezing fits.

In an effort to be more active I went disc golfing yesterday at a personally uncharted course in Quebec. Basically a hiking trail on the side of a ski hill, now snow free, it was the most physically challenging course I've ever played. Disc golf is a "sport" for stoners and the lazy so sweating and a rapid heart rate are foreign integrations into a regular round. Beyond the need for rock climbing equipment the course itself was tough. If the hole wasn't crazy long it demanded crazy accuracy through the trees. At least there was incredibly thick brush everywhere, mosquitoes, and high winds.

It's common practice for people to bless the recently sneezed, but I find the act ridiculous and not a courtesy at all. However, like most social graces, the outsider who does not bless or pleasingly receives a blessing is considered rude. So do I teach my daughter to say "bless you." Likely not, but these things have to be weened out of circulation. A replacement phrase should be introduced.

"Clear the path to breath the truth." or "Easy breezy mister sneezy."

Maybe just random words:

"Marmaduke" or "Chumbawumba"

Probably the best way to delete any response to sneezing at all is to keep people from sneezing in public. I'll start taking it as a personal offense and curse at anyone who sneezes in my general direction and punch any blasphemous nose within reach. If that becomes common practice sneezing will be shunned if not outlawed. Now to pass this wisdom to the next generation.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Putting your best Facebook forward

Despite my hermit-like avoidance of social networking sites, I land on a few from time to time. None hold my attention for very long, but I do thumb through the pictures despite the often

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

shallow and redundant content. Cameras can now take hundreds of pictures which should greatly magnify our ability to capture rare events and brief moments in time, yet the majority of online photo albums feature the same predictable scenes: friends posing as if staged for a portrait, holding up their drinks, flashing their "victory" fingers or wagging their tongues (how happy the day will be when this trend dies).

The background, foreground and context are ignored and candidness apparently goes without consideration, unless of course it's in catching someone in a compromising situation. This raises the real point of concern.
When teens through twenty-somethings are documenting the unruly, experimental, law-breaking, party-dedicated experiences of their youth, what kind of photographic legacy are people leaving for their children?

The photos I have of my relatives are respectable scenes, depictions of civil social gatherings. I don't have a picture of my grandfather doing a keg stand or my mother hanging on men who were not my father. I know they were all young once and went through similar experiences, maybe made similar mistakes, but the world wasn't watching then. Their was no chance their embarrassing situations would end up on YouTube.

When generations down the line are assigned a genealogy project for school, they'll compile their ancestral information with ease by simply plugging our names into Google. What sorts of images will they find?