The proper expression for a photograph is a quirky grin and haunted, piercing eyes.
Kai hates having his picture taken, possibly because he's terrible at smiling for the camera despite a generally joyful demeanor.
Just get the DNA test if you're nervous.
Surely here we are all ogged's children. Or I suppose unf's
I have lots of opinions about camera-face.
On a trip, I was watching a woman get photographed by her fiancé. Every time, she'd make the same smile, which was very flattering. In between, her face was animated and interesting, until she froze it into that smile. Every one of her pictures was going to look exactly the same. Then, reviewing our own pictures, my traveling partner hated posed pictures (and scenics of ruins, having been to nearly all of them) and instantly moved past them to find more genuine ones. The combination of seeing her freeze lifeless and having him hate those photos of us mostly got me over camera-face.
But! Those are often flattering pictures. I am amazed at how good The Kids These Days are at finding their best pictures and consistently taking them. There was a video that was supposed to be damning, about how people at a club were being video'd instead of taking a picture and didn't they look funny mugging. But they didn't! Boy howdy were they good at snapping into a flattering position. They know how and I never did.
I don't really know what to do to get good pictures, except: take a thousand million shots at a time and have the subject in motion. Or accept getting another shot of the same smile, which is likely flattering.
I just told my kid he didn't have to smile.
The funniest thing is to watch your kid try to talk to you in the bathroom, while completely preoccupied with their reflection. Hawaii turns into this super over-acting little adult, Pokey and Ace just make faces at themselves.
I have a really broken reaction to mirrors -- I involuntarily open my eyes really wide, and it's very hard not to. Which means that I'm not all that sure of what I look like when I'm not impersonating a startled fawn.
I am amazed at how good The Kids These Days are at finding their best pictures and consistently taking them
I have (very wealthy, which maybe matters?) younger cousins who've been at this since they were no older than my girls, who are still silly in front of the camera and have no meaningful idea about what's going to be flattering on the other side. My cousins have had the same pose, same smiles, same angles for a decade before getting to the college-selfie stage and it did sort of freak me out.
I used to practice my delivery of stories in the mirror, in maybe 8-10th grade. I got much funnier.
I had to have a picture taken for a company thing last week. I thought I looked like Hannibal Lector, and not in a good way.
I hate it when they don't tell you there's a human artery stuck between your teeth.
If you're washing your hands in a communal bathroom and someone starts talking to you, do you make eye contact with them or their reflection? What do you do if they made the opposite choice?
I usually just ask them which they prefer and stick with that.
Make eye contact with your own reflection as if they aren't even there.
Iris has developed a lovely smile for the camera, although I'm not sure how: she's not really part of a selfie crowd or whatever. Since getting Kai to smile is an ordeal, it's nice that we at least have good odds that she'll look pleasant in 95% of the pics.
15: Would you prefer to talk to me looking normal, or startled?
I'm looking at homework grades for one of my classes. ~15 students, weekly homework. In the entire semester, one single student skipped one single assignment. It FEELS incredibly bizarre, but I don't have any memories of passing back light assignments, nor do any particular grades look implausible, and also I know the grader incredibly well, and she is not likely to be very close with these students. (Different majors, different years, etc.) Weird.
Maybe getting parts cut out makes you a better teacher?
With only 15 kids, fluky good behavior isn't that weird. What would you normally expect -- 9-10 kids do all the assignments, and the rest are varying levels of flaky?
Yeah, something like that. I'd expect the last assignment or two to have rates around 50%, and at least 1-2 students who are flakey all semester long, and nearly everyone to miss at least one assignment somewhere. I tell them up front that I don't accept late homework, but that I'll drop the two lowest homework grades to compensate for a sick day or an emergency or whatever.
You think that's weird, when I was teaching middle school and I came in to class late once (only once, I swear), all fifty unattended 12-13 year olds were quietly studying. It was spooky.
I am just going to brag for a moment: Hawaii brought home the first half of a novel she's been working on, all semester long. She's got seven chapters done. (This is in gigantic kid handwriting, of course.) The teacher had made some offhand comment about letting Hawaii work on her book if she was finished with the rest of her work, but we hadn't exactly processed what she meant. She only let us read the first three chapters tonight.
My kid has most of a novel written, although I think he's going to flake on the final chapters. The plot entails kicking all his friends' asses in a Minecraft Hunger Games tournament.
My oldest has been writing comic books recently, but I'm not going to lie: they're terrible.
Does a person "write" comic books or "draw" comic books? I hesitated, and I'm not sure I made the right choice.
I think somebody does both but you'd want to be the person who draws them if you have a choice. The writing is basically always terrible.
But what I mean is what do you call a person whose both?
Noser is a lefty and not comfortable with writing at all. Nor is he a good speller, because he doesn't se to give a fuck. Rilee, almost two yrs junior, was unrelenting in kicking his ass when we were practicing for his class bee last year. On the other hand, at Rilee's age Noser was doing borrowing and multiplication.
Writer-artist, I think, by analogy with singer-songwriter. Or creator.
If anybody wants the joys of a life in small retail, apparently there is no comic store called "Das Comic-Tsar."
Your frequent-purchaser reward card would read: "The more you shop, the faster you will buy."
Kid B has a selfie smile that looks consistently good in selfies, but is nothing like she ever looks in actual life. It's bizarre watching her do it.
Kid D is remarkably photogenic - there will be a nice picture of the four kids with the older three looking perfectly normal and fine, and then she will just look so much better - she can do that focus/connection thing with the camera in a way that the others don't bother to. Even when she was very little she could hold or repeat a pose to get the picture right. I find that also quite weird.
Also both kids tend to look stoned in pictures. They inherited that from their mither.
My wife and son and I were supposed to spend the day in Curaçao, and instead we are spending it at an airport.
Keeping your plans loose let's you do fun things like that.
Word to your mims
I came to drop bimbs.
I got more rhymes than the bible's got psilms
31, 32- I would say "make". I made a comic book. She is making a comic book. He will make a comic book. Have you made any comic books?
Etc.
I don't let my son draw things or write books because you know who else did those things.
It's an awful feeling to have been up for an hour already at 7:30 am on the 2nd of 16 days home and hate everything and everyone. We are all awful screamy upset jerks. At least these two weeks will feel like ten weeks.
Ugh, heebie, not fun! This is a weekend where I get to savor the silence, but what I really need to do is scrub the kitchen floor.
That's silly. It will just get dirty again.
The second hour is not going quite as bad as the first hour was. We managed to break a 60 million year old fossil of a flying fish!
How many hours are in 16 days? What percentage of them are awful? Show your work.
I heard the world isn't 60 million years old anyway. It was probably only a 6,000 year old fossil.
Also, for the record, my breasts weighed about 5 lbs total.
Having them removed is a bit of an extreme diet strategy, but whatever works!
Sorry, me. My phone no longer thinks I'm memorable.
Do these breasts make my ass look fat?
Winter break, hub? Yes, ours is off to a contentious start as well. Lots of arguing.
I'm pretty sure 5 pounds isn't near the record.
Just lock them all out of the house! PROBLEM SOLVED! Peace and quiet!
I miss you. How's my cat?
Are they even in the house? Like they sent them back in jars?
That flying fish fossil knows what it did.
Don't put the kids in jars, Heebie. Or if you do, make sure you poke some holes in the lids for air.
I don't want the kids buried,
In a tit cemetery.
Paleontologists love nothing more than putting things back together, so it's all good.
68: We miss you! Your cat still hates the kittens. We started Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle today.
Do you take any extra pets or only cats?
OT: I sent a Facebook friend request to my brother's new girlfriend. I was wondering if that's a good thing to do given that I've never met her, but she accepted it in like 45 seconds. Does that mean they're engaged?
It means she's stalked you too and is curious but your brother hasn't been as forthcoming as she would like.
Well, sure. If we were forthcoming people, I would just ask my brother about his girlfriend.
I feel like I should sent her a warm, friendly DM but then I remember that I don't do that very well.
To be fair to me, I haven't really tried very often.
Possibly I'm so good at conveying the human condition that I was supposed to be the Tolstoy of the Zulus. Getting a job offer in a distant place with no relocation budget is apparently my thing lately.
Maybe if the Zulus were really into puns.
WHO IS THE TOLSTOY OF HULU PLUS?
I'm really bad at doing research into potential employers.
xelA likes to be photographed, and likes to look at photos of himself, but you have to be careful he doesn't pose. He talks of doing 'a cheese' or 'sending a cheese to Mummy', which means I have to get the phone out and he pulls what he thinks is a smile but is actually a strange rictus that he finds hilarious. He is quite photogenic otherwise, though.
The phrase 'sending a cheese to Mummy' makes me think of toileting training.
Yeah, from 'say cheese' as a trigger for smiling in photos, but he's reified that as 'a cheese'.