iQuote – Life Is

• Life is like a jigsaw puzzle but you don’t have the picture on the front of the box to know what it’s supposed to look like. Sometimes, you’re not even sure if you have all of the pieces. (from the book, A Whack on the Side of the Head)

• Life is easier if you dread only one day at a time. Charles M. Schulz

• Life is hard. Then you die. In between you are a volunteer. Unknown (This was my ‘mantra’ during all those years of being on Volunteer Boards!)

• Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference. Robert Fulghum (I collected quotes like this when our youngest child had cancer.)

• Life is so very simple when you have no facts to confuse you. Peg Bracken

The Afterlife

The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife — a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it’s being held.
- Woody Allen

I’ve been thinking about Death lately. Not mine, specifically. Others. We’re spending part of the winter in Arizona, and most of our closest neighbours are considerably older than us. I fully expect to see a decline in the number of occupants at any time.

Emergency Services/The Fire Department have been on our street twice so far, but one time was to remove a rattlesnake from a garage and the other was to put a new key in the lock box just outside our front door. The Fire Department seems to only have one daily driver – a big shiny fire truck – so when the truck, and two or three burly young firemen arrive in our tiny cul-de-sac, it is quite the production.

I’ve also been thinking about the Afterlife.  I’m not inclined to believe in Heaven and Hell – not as locales I will be spending eternity in, at any rate. No, I’m thinking of Data Afterlife. Thanks to the Internet, little bits of my life will float around forever – or at least until Google figures out how to put an expiry date on blog posts that detail how much snow there was at the Red House during the great storm of ’11.

In addition to all those bits, there are the websites and accounts that require you to register a username and password before you can access any information. If left unattended, long after you have departed this world your Facebook Account will be sending your Email Account Happy Birthday messages.

Clearly I need to have an Exit Strategy in place. If my ultimate demise is slow enough, I will have time to cancel all those online accounts. But if my death is sudden, as it surely would be if that big saguaro cactus next to my lawn chair toppled over while I was engrossed in reading a book – well, I just wouldn’t have time to react, let alone post my farewell on this blog.

I started my Exit Strategy with a list. First I thought about all the Online Accounts that create a Public Presence. My list included a few of the following (you can likely add many more to this list):

• Facebook
• Myspace
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• eBay
• special interest websites
• blogs
• business websites
• gaming accounts

Then I thought about my private accounts, such as:

• email
• news readers
• banking
• credit cards
• retail purchases
• cloud web storage

Once I had my list, I thought about which ones I would want to close down (or have someone close down for me if I did suffer Death by Cactus). The most important one could be my email accounts. If they were hacked in my absence, all the addresses in the account would be fair game to the hacker – and all my friends would receive Viagra Spam.

Any account that had access to any of my banking information should also be closed down.

Any personal information that is stored on the web should also be removed. That would include personal photos and documents.

As for all the rest, I thought about:

• What content I was willing to leave in the hands of all the insensitive, inappropriate, mischievous people who might take advantage of my absence.
• Who was going to tell my Facebook friends that I wouldn’t be reading my timeline any time soon?
• Who was going to say goodbye to all my faithful blog followers?
• If I leave an account open, how long does it remain the property of my survivors? When does post mortem copyright expire? (This doesn’t actually apply to my content, but it might to yours.)
• How do I want my online presence dealt with. Do I want all the information removed? Do I want it left online?

Last, but not least, I am working on an Action Plan (if the Canadian Government can have an Action Plan, so can I:

• I’m making a list of all my internet accounts, with their URLs and my usernames.  I’ll state what I want done with each account. I’ll print this document, then hand print in my passwords and file it in a safe place. I’ll try to keep it up to date.
• I’ll decide who will carry out my wishes. (I have no problem with The Car Guy or one of my children seeing all my online content.)

That pretty much wraps up my thoughts this week about Death and the Afterlife. How about you?

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

Charles Darwin

Evolution – Distorted Perceptions of Beauty

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At age 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.
- Ann Landers (1918-2002) -

Why do you think women worry about how they look?

• Do women tend to judge other women by how they look?
• Are women bombarded by companies who want them to think that they don’t measure up?
• Do women judge themselves by what is negative, not what is positive?
• Do women pressure other women to conform to an idealized image of what is beautiful?
• Do women equate aging to loss of beauty?
• Do women believe beauty gives them a competitive edge in all facets of their lives?
• Do women fear that men won’t like/love them if they are not beautiful?
• Do women believe that beauty is of more value than intelligence?
• Are women surrounded by media role models who are air brushed, photo shopped beauties?

An example of an Air Brushed and Photo Shopped Model:

Here are some other websites that discuss Distorted Perceptions of Beauty:

Real or Retouched? Distorted Perceptions of Beauty - An excellent example of very bizarre photo retouching.

Chasing Beauty: An Addict’s Memoir  by Lisa Hickey- “I want beauty not to matter.”

How much time do you spend trying to make yourself look better?

Do men worry about how they look? If so, why?

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For more Women and the Beauty Industry rants from your un-retouched, un-makeupped, wrinkled, grey haired author, go to my Category called Women’s Stories.

In the Good Old Days

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.
- Doug Larson -

The Car Guy has a 1950 Fargo half ton. It has been in his family since the early ’60′s. It isn’t all that comfortable to ride in, and it no longer does any particular job around here since a newer truck was purchased. But I expect the Fargo will stay in the family for many more years because it is a link to a place and time that is now only a memory.

I introduced you to our friend (L8n) and his nostalgic ride (Pink Freud) in the post Free Spirit.  Freud is a 1938 Ford Hot Rod. The Car Guy has been thinking about adding a Hot Rod to his fleet, so this summer we attended a few car shows. What we discovered was – we have very different opinions as to what would be the perfect Hot Rod.

I took pictures of some of my favourites and when I looked at them after the show I realized that they all had two googly eyes (headlights) – old Fords, I think.

They were all nice and shiny too, but I wanted to make them look like a pencil sketch, so I used the appropriate filter.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
- Henry Ford -

People can have the Model T in any color – so long as it’s black.
- Henry Ford -

I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.
- Henry Ford -

It has been a month and a half since the last car show. Much has changed since then. The Harley has been written off, six inches of snow covers the ground, and the stores are already playing Christmas Music. Time to hunker down and think fondly of better days – both in the past and to come.

If you could go back to the “Good Old Days”, when would that be?