Freeze Frame

Have you ever noticed that public people (movie stars, film directors, etc.) in public settings, having their picture taken, often appear goofy? Their heads are too big, they’re in awkward poses, their smiles look phony. Or all of the above and then some more.

There’s something about freezing a person in time that is not flattering. Take a short video of them and they look fine. Take one frame of that video and enlarge it, and they look goofy. A video is really just a bunch of goofy photos strung together, but play them back through a video monitor and a person in the video looks ordinary, not goofy at all. I think its because their posture and features are changing constantly, even if subtly, and our brain takes that stream of less-than-flattering images and composes them into a likeness of a human being, and then we see the person that we expect to see.

Maybe I’m being too critical. In fact, I am critical. I hate to present something to the world that isn’t my best effort. I have to set the bar somewhere, so I try to set it where I have to strive a little harder to make my creation as near to perfect as I can. So am I picky? Was Michelangelo picky? Was da Vinci picky? Was Monet picky?

Someone is going to ask, “Are you comparing yourself to some of the greatest artists of all time?” Well, yes. Yes I am. I’m just telling it like it is.

Earlier this morning (did I mention it’s morning?), I awoke in a dark room. I turned my head to look at the clock beside my bed. The clock’s usually glowing digits were dark. The electric power was off. I lay awake for a long time, but the power never came back on. It’s unusual for the power to go off. Rarely, it will flicker, but to go off and stay off is unusual. Eventually, I returned to sleep. When I awoke again, the power was on and the clock read 4:43AM. I got out of bed and walked to the kitchen and reset the blinking displays on my stove and microwave oven. A clock radio that cost me less than $10 has a battery backup for timekeeping, but my electric stove that cost hundreds of dollars and my microwave oven that also wasn’t cheap do not have backup power for their clocks. Why is that? I just want to put that notion out there. Battery backup for everything with a clock! But this is modern times and we needn’t use batteries. Just put a Wi-Fi chip inside the product and let it get the time from the Internet.

It’s almost 5:30AM on a Saturday morn and still dark outside. I think this little article has meandered to something resembling a conclusion. It’s not a great article but it will have to do. I’m trying to be less picky. I’m going to hit the Publish button and maybe go back to bed. Or maybe I’ll just sit and read until the sun comes up. Goodnight and good morning.