It's just Photoshop, dear

My then-boss (lets call him Henry) was talking about his troupe of Navy Cadets. He is some sort of Captain on evenings and weekends. Part of his job is training teenagers by taking them on drills for some kind of naval exercises on the lake.

He mentioned one of the teenage cadets was (as he assumed) gay, and Henry was giving him extra attention and encouraging the kid. He then says he wishes one of his sons would come out so he had always wanted a gay kid.

Which basically just shut the rest of the conversation down. We gaped at him.

Let's break this down:

Giving extra attention to a teenage boy who Henry doesn't know if or if not the kid is gay is not appropriate. Big no. Be supportive to everyone, be kind. If kid comes to you for help, be good to that kid.

Wishing your kid was gay, and saying you'd be disappointed if he was not, that is fuuuuucked up. I shouldn't even have to say why. Be a good ally, be a good parent, but wishing any sexuality on your child is uncomfortably strange. (just think of what you'd be saying if he'd wished his gay kid was straight)

Especially since... come on... being anywhere on the 2SLGBTQIA+ landscape makes life a little less easy. Even just a little bit.

And we have Henry. A late 40's, straight, cis, Caucasian man, trying his hardest to be as accepting as possible inadvertently turning his acceptance in offensive stereotyping...

AND he felt like sharing this to his colleagues at a work function.

I NEED someone else's perspective on this.

And my brain got kind of crossed.

And I put in my deodorant instead…

Like… my brain told me, “Smelly, do something.”

And the body goes, “Ok, doing something.”

So if a conversation was something like, “Okay barachiki, here is your receipt, you have ten days to return it.” I might reply, “Rock and roll!” As if to say ‘that’s great, thank you.’

I also (though less frequently now) use the word ‘swish’ to describe something as ‘excellent’. As in “The new computer I got is actually pretty swish.”

Neither of these are common parlance. I often forget that. And I think this came from a period of my life when I wanted to reduce the usage of the word “awesome” in my vocabulary.

This is because when I was a university student I felt like awesome meaning being ‘struck by wonder and amazement’ was being overtaken by meaning ‘anything good’.

I was really upset the other day about a client assuming that a project of mine was AI because it looked fake, even though it was a montage of many pictures and hours of photoshopping.

It really bothered me, but ultimately got me nowhere. If I rage against my clients, I will have no clients.

So I’ve had a little think.

I think I have to talk to my clients (or put in a disclaimer on the footer of my emails) that I do not support AI and will not use it when it comes to their projects.

I spent ages coming up with a cover for a new project of mine. Lots of photoshopping to make it stand out, cleaning it up, adjusting lighting. It was a montage of several images, down to the shirt, the fingers, and the vegetables in the background.

I was told not to use the image because it is AI.

For real!??!

I hate this. I hate this. I am really good at photoshop. And now everyone is doubting my skills. So I have to use crap photos that are under-resolution that are 'approved' by a committee, so I have lost my creative control. And the project looks worse.

This got me thinking to my first sleepover birthday party.

I think we watched Beauty and the Beast (or the Little Mermaid.. i don't know) like four times, did a scavenger hunt, had some games and whatnot. At bedtime the girls stayed up and tried to tell ghost stories.

I don't remember any of the other ones. I am pretty sure none of them were memorable anyways. But I'm so proud that seven-year-old barachiki told a story so scary that one of the girls woke up from nightmares and had to go home early.

I remember it was about a girl (maybe our age) who was running from a Frankenstein. She was being chased by the monster, who was giant and mean, and she was tripping over branches and whatever. Then she fell off the cliff and died.

That was the story, all of it.

Anyways, yeah, the girl (i think it was my friend's cousin) was so terrified that she got her mom to pick her up from the birthday party in the middle of the night.