Sad and Beautiful World

Google and Orkut: DO SOMETHING!!

Please, please help. If you have kids. If you know anyone with kids. If you like kids. If you were once a kid.

Google-owned social networking site Orkut is FLOODED with fake profiles. Apparently it is some sort of joke or idea of fun to a ton of people (mostly in Brazil for some reason). They even list their locations as "Fakelandia" and things like that.

Over 65 confirmed Flickr users have had their images of their children STOLEN and used in fake profiles on Orkut. Direct requests to the Orkut users to remove the image have been met with mockery. The 'report abuse' button has not always received a response.

The site is supposed to be for users 18 years old or older. So how can Orkut allow thousands upon thousands of profiles that list themselves as 6,7, 8 years old???? If you have ever made your child's photos available on the Internet in any form, you should log into Orkut and start searching.  Yes, the only real way to protect your photos is to NOT POST THEM, but this is outrageous. And so damn easy for Google to remedy! Why won't they fix it!??!

I had already made 99% of my daughter's photos Friends/Family only on Flickr, but now 100% of them and 100% of the photos of Tori are marked the same. I recommend you do the same if you haven't already.

We are trying to generate media attention to this issue. CNN, Fox, and many other sources have already been contacted, but the more the better.

Here are some links of places to write:

In the Orkut help forum I started a thread

On the Orkut blog there is an email contact and a link to 'tell your story'

HERE IS GOOGLE'S PHONE # 1.650.930.3555 and here is how to contact them by email.

CNN

ABC News

Fox News

She's a big girl, all the way

My daughter started sixth grade last week, Middle School (that is sixth, seventh, and eighth grade)! She was excited about it most of the summer and then, very naturally, got a bit nervous in those last couple of days. She was so cute getting ready. We spent part of the summer totally cleaning out her disaster of a room so she could begin the year organized. She now has floor space where once she had none. Her room is so freaking small, but we took out the doors to this stupid huge closet that takes up half the room and put her bed in there. We cut a little ‘window’ in the side to let in light from the actual window the stupid closet was mostly blocking. I gave her my old computer and a wardrobe. We filled up bags and bags of clothes to give away, boxes of books, and mountains of garbage were tossed. Very fulfilling. Now I just have to get my ass over to the donation places to get this shit out of my house. Heh. Also, clean out the ‘extra’ room that is now impossible to walk into because it is filled with stuff I figured I’d put away “later.” Yeah…I’ll get to that eventually!

So she’s doing really well. That first day she asked if Pete and I would walk with her down to the end of the street where the bus picks her up (in elementary school she walked or I gave her a ride). As I watched her get on the bus and get carried away I felt so nervous inside and I realized it wasn’t for her, but a reliving of my own horrid middle school experiences. Coming home almost every day in tears off the bus because of the two friends who turned on me would yell insults from the back of the bus to me in the front during the whole ride.

I thought about that for a bit and took a deep breath. My daughter is so far beyond what I was at her age…so much more aware of the way people are and I just know she wouldn’t put up with that sort of thing. Even better is that I know she wouldn’t perpetrate it onto others, either.

So each day she comes outside in the morning with her backpack on to say goodbye to Pete and I and the dogs. We watch her walk down the street looking so much older than the kid who came running home from elementary school last year; and we feel a bit old. But we also feel quite proud. She’s been on top of her homework without being asked. She’s been extremely helpful around the house. She’s gone to bed without giving me grief. It is like a switch was flipped and she decided she needed to grow up. Amazing…not that she was a bad kid before or anything. She just is more focused on being helpful and responsible this year. And it is fantastic. Makes the whole household happier, really.

Damn, I’m proud of her.

Come you masters of war

"You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud"
-Bob Dylan, 1963

Six years since 9/11 and we are still at war in Iraq while Osama Bin Laden broadcasts new videos.

They tell us never to forget yet they want us to forget how they lied to us so they could take us to war in Iraq.

I won't fucking forget any of it.

"And then we spoke of kids on the coast"

I have discovered the photo technique known as Through the Viewfinder and am completely addicted. It is just what it says: taking a photo through the viewfinder of another camera. The old box cameras work best as they have a large viewfinder. It involves making a tube of some sort to block out the light so that your top camera can be far enough away to focus. This is a great link to a tutorial another Flickr user wrote that explains the whole thing, with photos. It is great for creating an instant vintage look and lends itself to the surreal and fantastical. I'm in love with it.

Here's a photo I took on a day trip to Coney Island. It sparked some stream-of-consciousness writing and this is something I'd like to try to do more often in the coming year: combine words and photos. I will post these on the blog here as well as on Flickr...

I haven't been to any beach in a long while...as soon as that salt water air hits my nose; it feels like childhood. Both sets of my grandparents lived by beaches; one set on Long Beach Island and the others in Belle Harbor, NY.  My last grandparent died two and a half years ago.

I remember staying in the water until my lips were blue; my brother and I would be dragged out to eat cold meatloaf sandwiches with ketchup and sand my grandmother made. Nothing ever tasted so good.  Waiting to be allowed back in the water, my brother and I would spend our time building intricate castles and forts per my brother's meticulous instructions (the future engineer), racing against the tide to get the moat dug deep enough to protect our creation.

Taking long walks with my paternal grandfather down to the fence that separated the nude beach from their beach so he could get a peek (hmm, maybe that's where it all started)!

Walking to get a soft ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles at the corner from my maternal grandparents' bungalow. Watching my grandpa's glee at devouring the sweets he wasn't supposed to be eating as if my grandmother didn't know.

The ocean brings those memories back to me with the tide, my feet sinking into the sand just like they did when I was a kid.