Nude teens raise eyebrows

For those of you who know me, I find the following article both pleasing and troublesome.
Pleasing, because some people are enjoying life how it was meant to be enjoyed - nude.
Troublesome, because one person has a problem with it so the city decides to try and make a law against it.
Why can't people be nude, what is wrong with that. The people aren't going around jiggling their bits at little old ladies or children, no they are letting the warm air hit them rather then roasting in some clothing (which is bad for you I might add).
Now about the one person who complained, ""The parking lot is not a strip club," she said. "What about children seeing this?"" well let me answer these two things:
1) Strip club reference - at a strip club, people go in to see people take off their clothes - their clothes were already off (how I read the article anyway). Also in a strip club, people go in to see shake their bits - as I said earlier, this is not the case.
2) The children. This is what people always say when they want to stop something (the Simpson's have made fun of this more then once). Studies have shown that children who are exposed to non-sexual nudity tend to be better socially adjusted then children who are taught that any kind of nudity is bad (taught to dislike their own bodies).

Okay, I'm done with my rant. Now on the the article:

Link
Nude teens raise eyebrows
Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:10 AM ET

By Scott Christianson

BRATTLEBORO, Vermont (Reuters) - Some have appeared naked in a downtown parking lot. Others rode their bicycles or simply strolled the streets in the nude.

Teenagers in the quaint Vermont town of Brattleboro are raising eyebrows this summer with brazen displays of nudity.

So far they haven't been arrested or ticketed: public nudity isn't illegal in the town of 13,000 people, unless it's done to arouse sexual gratification.

Vermont has a live-and-let-live tradition, allowing skinny-dipping and nude sunbathing. Brattleboro, the first permanent English settlement in the state in 1724, is home to a community of writers, artists and musicians as well as transplanted entrepreneurs from Boston and New York.

When the weather grew hot this year, a couple of dozen teens took to holding hula hoop contests, riding bikes and parading past the shops wearing only their birthday suits.

Nobody, including the police, seemed to take offense until one local, Theresa Toney, went before the town government in August to complain about a group of youngsters naked in a parking lot.

"The parking lot is not a strip club," she said. "What about children seeing this?"

Town officials asked their attorney to draft an ordinance to ban such displays for the Select Board to vote on in September. When the teens heard about it, some staged a nude sit-in.

"I don't see why it's such a big deal," said Alec McPherson, a recent high school graduate as he sat at a coffee shop table, browsing a thick volume of artwork from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Everyone's naked in this book."

His companion, Jeremiah Compton, a high school junior who plays in a local metal-and-punk band, agreed. "It's just that we're bored and expressing our right," he said.

"We have a nuclear power plant a few miles away and a ridiculous war in the Middle East, countries getting bombed," said Ian Bigelow, a 23-year-old who had gathered with some of his friends outside a bookstore. "So why's it such a big problem if we chose to get nude?"

Censor the classics?!

Okay, here is the deal. Tom and Jerry, along with other classic cartoons are being censored so that they cut out "...any scenes or references in the series where smoking appeared to be condoned, acceptable, glamorized or where it might encourage imitation,". All of that because ONE person complained.
While I don't like smoking, never have, I don't think that changing the past should occur just because I don't like something. Parents should use the occasions where smoking comes up, to talk to their children, not just let the TV be the kids baby sitter. One more problem I have with this, just because a young person sees Tom smoking a cancer stick, doesn't mean that they will imitate it, he's often the bad guy anyway, I haven't seen a kid run around and smack someone with a shovel and an iron because they saw it on a cartoon.
Here is my opinion on this one - raise your kids, teach them what is right, and give them the resources to make the right decisions; but I guess I just don't know what it means to be a parent (and that means my parents didn't know how to be parents either).
Here is the link to the article. Link

Another day and another rough night

Well, last night was another rough one for me. I had trouble getting to sleep. Just layed awake, and talked to Jana - I guess I was a grup to boot. I think I fell asleep about 3:30am, after Jana massaged me for about an hour (thank you again). I prefer to go to bed and sleep around that time, if not a little later - but not when I have to work in the morning. Well, I'm up, and I feel like posting for a couple of minutes before I get ready.
I'm going to work this morning, all bright eyed and bushy taile (okay, not really, but I can lie - it's my blog after all). Today shall be an interesting day, I will be taking care of housekeeping - and I won't have to watch the Front Desk at the same time - enough coverage. Too bad the boss didn't listen to me and give the guy who is coming back today a few days worth of retraining before he started on again.
Yesterday I relized that I'm not skinny, okay, I'm fat (good thing Jana doesn't read). Guess I knew that before, it just never hit me before. Now what am I going to do about it? I guess some exercise and diet is in order - where to start, it all seems kind of daunting. I'll have to give some extra thought to this.
I'm off to get ready for work. Woohoo, extra woo.

Flickr

Well, today I deiced to try using Flickr for many of my photos... I can't say that I have been really impressed.
It's a good service, but it just doesn't seem to live up to the hype that I have been bombarded with. The Pro service is more what I expected of the free account, the free account is just so limited that it can't be used by anyone who wants to use the service to archive and organize their photos.
The benefits of the pro account ($24.95 per year):

• 2 GB monthly upload limit
• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited photosets
• Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
• The ability to replace a photo
• Ad-free browsing and sharing

Compare that to what you get with a Free Account:

• 20 MB monthly upload limit
• 3 photosets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Storage of smaller (resized) images

Let's compare the two sets of features.
Monthly upload limit: Pro 2GB, Free 20MB. I don't think that the upload limit is that big of a deal, unless you constantly uploading photos - but for the normal person, 20MB should be fine most of the time.

Storage: Really this the most annoying thing for me. Pro - Unlimited, Free - 200 most recent images. For the free account, I can see them wanting to put a limit of the amount of storage (after all, they have to pay for it), but to limit it to 200 images, that just seem kind of arbitrary. Why not put a size limit on the storage? That way people can ask "Well, I can upload 300 smaller images, or 200 larger images - which is more important to me?"
Now with a storage limit on the free account, you would think that no more photos would be allowed, or older ones would be deleted, once the limit is reached, but they are not. According to Flickr "Your photos are NOT removed from Flickr, only from the list of your photos." What?! That means that if I have 201 pictures, and the first one I uploaded was that of my newborn baby - then it's still there, but I can't get to it unless I pay $25.00.
Here is the deal, they are not limiting the size of the account because they have to pay for the extra storage, but only because they want people to pay for the service. Yes, limiting the number of photos that people can see is a way of paying for the extra storage - you will get people who pay - but really it sounds more like blackmail to me.

Photosets: Pro - Unlimited, Free - 3. These are basically just super tags, that have a nice image to represent the tag... not a big deal or a huge waste of storage. So why do they limit the free account to only 3? Not a deal breaker, you can at least use tags, but they aren't as useful (harder to find) then the photosets.

Image size: Pro - Unlimited storage of high-resolution images, Free - storage of smaller (resized) images. I think I explained my take on this in the Storage section.

My take on Flickr, can be useful for very limited uploading of images for blogging or something like that (as long as you use the account once every 90 days), or very good for frequent updating of images for many reasons (if you are willing to pay for it), but it doesn't seem to have a good middle ground.

Woohoo!!

I'm almost out of sales!! Now I'm just waiting for them to hire someone to replace me in that roll.
On another note, why is short hair on men associated with not being professional? I have long hair (okay, had now I just have a stub) and I am a better employee then most... but because I have long hair people see me as someone who is - I'm not even sure what. Maybe it seems like I don't play by the rules, but then that seems to be what makes the best employee - a person who is independent enough to think for themselves, and others when needed. Okay, that rant is over.

All in all, a good day. I plan on going to a celebration dinner (because of not being in sales any more).

Lawn

All right, I mowed the lawn! Everyone happy?!

Another day at work

Well today, was another day at work. Can't say that much happened. I wrote a rather long post (long for me) in my other blog, about work, and what I do; it gave me a good way to think things through. Long and short of the post, I'm not happy, and I won't be as long as I'm doing sales. Time to work on the ol' resume. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will die, freeing up a good position for me (yes, I'm joking).
I haven't felt very well today, bad headache, stomach ache, some shortness of breath (that I attribute to my stomach ache), and feeling hot all day. I'm sure some sleep will do me good.
In the morning I'll tell you the story about how I raced into a burning building to save a little kitten. (Yes, I'm lying.)