Nikon digital camera suggestions might include a SLR digital camera or a compact point and shoot camera. The Nikon D3digital SLR camera is a nice little camera for the professional photographer. The body alone can cost about five thousand dollars and then you will need to buy the lenses, which could run you hundreds of dollars for just one. If you just need a camera for every day use, you might find the Coolpix digital cameras suited for your needs.
The Nikon digital camera suggestions for the Coolpix digital cameras include the P1500 and the S700. The P1500 has 12.1 megapixels, four times digital zoom and 3.5 optical zoom with a two and a half inch viewing screen. This is a great camera for the price. For a little less money, Nikon has the S700 with 12.1 megapixels with four times digital zoom and three times optical zoom with a 2.7 inch viewing screen. Both cameras are compact and easy to take anywhere you go. The ease of use is perfect for beginners as well as experts in photography.
The Coolpix S10 digital camera is unique with a movable viewing screen. This camera has 6 megapixels with ten times optical zoom and four times digital zoom. This would be the perfect camera for taking group pictures where the user wants to be included. The next of the Nikon digital camera suggestions would be the Coolpix S51. This little camera takes some clear images and has many features and accessories that you would need. The camera has 8.1 megapixels with four times digital zoom and three times optical zoom. The three-inch viewing screen makes seeing the subject easier.
Depending on what your need is Nikon has many different cameras that give clear and crisp images with perfect coloring. You can compare the cares to see which one will give you the most functions and features.
While Nikon is one of the best when it comes to high quality digital cameras, they’re certainly not the only game in town. There are equal and better cameras around, you just need to know where to look.
From within the closet
watched Christine
as her best friend Rose
rode her nephew
the soft liquid pools of
her eyes watched
the naked orbs of her
roommates breasts
bounce up and down
jiggle and wiggle
like twin bowels of jell-o
from where she
knelt upon the carpeted
floor with her wrists
bound to the curtain rod
hanging above her
head while her ears heard
the grunts of her
well-hung nephew listened
to her best friends
soft feral sighs and moans
of sexual ecstasy
while the little round ball
of the mouth gag
strapped around her head
resting between her
teeth prevented Christine
from uttering a single
sound much less to mutter her
disapproval not that
the single mother of four did
or didn’t as unable to
close her eyes or fall asleep
because of the hard
fullness of the masculine dildo
buried deep inside
within the honeycomb of her
hot and wet pussy
oscillating ever so insistently
where it pressed up
against the nub of her clitoris
the naked raven haired
daughter of mother nature and
the gift from the womb
of the ancient goddess of love
patiently awaited her
turn to being ridden from dusk
till the coming of the
dawn by her former not so loving
husbands well-hung
nephew there on the altar of lust
dedicated to human
reproduction within his bedroom
After years of bad first impressions and wasted, awkward Saturday nights, I finally found what I’ve been looking for last night. Great to look at, casual, and it gets my head all fuzzy in just the right sorts of ways. It took more than a few awful first dates, and hazy nights to get me here, but I have finally found a bar I can call home. A short busty brunette poured me some Brooklyn Brown Ale, and out of my peripheral vision I saw something golden, a clear and utter lack of douchebags.
I knew I found something special when I walked through those doors, and the previously uninhabitable shit hole that existed prior was a thing of the past. No longer would I be witness to sketchy mustachioed man following girls into the lady’s room. No longer would I have to have the worst well drinks known to man. No longer would I worry about being stabbed with a rusty bar fork. These new ownership changed it from the ugly girl with glasses to the hot chick that you know was always there, beneath the seedy underbelly.
I have found the bar of my townie dreams. The crowd is cool, the bartenders flirty and yet not skanky, and the tap will be the eyes and ears of many a night of conquests and sad stories. It is my untapped future.
36,500 days in your life, if you live to 100 years of age. When you think about the sum of that number, it’s not a lot. Putting it into financial terms, you could buy a decent car or truck for that much, it’s a down payment on a house (albeit a small down payment), it could pay for a year of college at a higher end university.
Yet, with this limited time, we spend most of it allowing the challenges we each face daily to override the beauty that this life offers. All too frequently we ignore, or fail to notice, the sheer simplicity of the birds singing, the blooms on the trees, shrubs, and flowers, the purity of a child’s laugh, the unconditional love our pets bestow upon us, and the love from those closest to us. Each day we are given a precious gift of waking up in the morning and deciding what your path will be that day.
People have told me that it’s impossible for one person to change the world, but I’m taking a page from Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and attempting to accomplish the impossible. Together or singularly, we can change the world, one small act at a time, as each positive act is like a ripple; it grows bigger and bigger, creating a wave. I’ve said this a million times and I realize I’m like a broken record (I, myself, have trouble following my own advice, by the way), but I’m going to keep reminding everyone (myself included) until each person in this beautiful world realizes what we’ve got before it’s gone.
As you wake up tomorrow morning, I encourage you to find the beauty that greets you, even if it’s liquid sunshine (for hose of you not privileged enough to live in Seattle, liquid sunshine is my term for rain), because as The Eels once said in their song ‘Mr. E‘s Beautiful Blues‘, ‘Goddamn right it’s a beautiful day, ahah…’
I can sit up today, though not for long periods (due to the spinal tap head pains). I hope I’m not losing even more muscle mass by having to rest until my head pain is gone because that would be awful. I asked Frank if it was all right if I liked how I looked and he said it was fine, of course. But then I reminded him how concerned he was when I ordered myself a pair of 00 Petite pants earlier in the week; they fit wonderfully but he cautioned me that, if I got them, I would think it was okay to be a 00 Petite and would do what I could not to outgrow the pants. So how was liking myself at 97 pounds fine and getting pants in the right size for my 97-pound body wrong? It makes me feel uncomfortable and I can’t help thinking, What happens if I go down to 92 pounds and still don’t mind how I look? Is that okay? When is it time for me to be hospitalized? Only if I get down to 70 pounds? (I know, I was being unfair. Frank was trying to be supportive, knowing how much I battle with my self-image, and I had to be a bitch in catching him in an inconsistency, reminding me how he’s worried about me, which wasn’t right of me. He’s incredibly patient to put up with me.)
Every time I see a wrap-around mic and a dude standing at the front of the room I think of a megachurch. Kind of ironic, considering these two are getting married stark freakin’ naked. Judging by the placement of the groom’s right hand, I’m guessing the room might be a bit drafty. It’s all in the name of love.
Related: “Clothing Optional. Top Hat Required.” and Beach Weddings Are So Practical
Naked Man’s New Direction (also known as Skip to the title Oceans Updates for the meat of the article!)
Hello 2010! Today’s entry is about returning to a few topics explored in the past by Naked Man in the Tree as well as give a little information on the lack of updates coming from this site. In this brief entry there will be some good news to be shared and some bad news to be shared. Such is life.
This image depicts a tree and woman excitedly imagining about the big changes coming to Naked Man in the Tree, one of which, I know not, is clearly hard of seeing
We’ll begin with the good news: This site was started in 2007 as a place for me to begin to start writing about my personal passions in which my previous site (yes, I bet you didn’t know I had a site prior to this one!) was not directed towards. My prior site was silly and funny, while this site tended to focus on more serious topics (hopefully I kept some parts of it fun). Naked Man in the Tree was a place I could to develop my thoughts and viewpoints about the world and was never truly meant for public viewing. Of course if anybody wanted to take the time out to read what I have written and constructively criticize or appreciate my writing, I was happy with that too. I didn’t need it to be private although it was created as a playground for my personal creative adventures. This is in part why my entries rarely have any association with each other. This is why in one entry I will write a modern translation of an ancient Arabian story and in another entry write about an ecological disaster. These are things that interest me personally and I never meant to appeal to a “base.” This is also the reason why I will go months without updating.
I am about to graduate with a Masters degree in 2 months which (I’m sure you can imagine) has been the biggest thorn in my side stunting my creativity in favor of prudence. And although this child has been neglected, it has not been forgotten. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This child has been coming to adulthood in my head and I am going to create a new project site that will become my highest priority outside of financially supporting myself. In this new site you can expect the following:
1. Revised and updated articles on the topics you have already read on this site.
2. Audio-versions of the text for those of us who have more time to listen than to read.
3. A wide variety of new topics to be discussed with an addition of other creative projects.
4. Far more frequent updates.
5. Increased opportunities for discussion.
And let’s face it, this is good news. The only problem with this good news is that unlike this site I am going to create a “reservoir” of articles and projects before I begin the site which will take me a large portion of my Spring and Summer of 2010. When this reservoir is complete I am going to create a professional layout on an actual domain name (it’s already chosen and saved) with an incredibly user-friendly interface (not so much like this one). The best part is I’m actually leaving out a few of the best surprises for when the site actually opens (hopefully this fall). Unlike the site I had before Naked Man in the Tree, I will share the location of my new site to everybody who visits this site, so please continue to return for the actual posting of the address. However, at this point I DO plan on posting a few more entries before I create my own site.
Finally, I want to relate how impressed I am with the visits to this site despite my infamously infrequent updating. Each day hundreds to thousands of visitors flock to this site for some reason or another. It is clear that when I discipline myself and create something it can be appreciated, and my future site will be almost completely about enhancing your experience as a visitor to my site. I appreciate all the positive, thoughtful, and caring comments that I have received while creating these entries. Every single positive or thoughtful comment is the true payment I receive for my labor (because everyone knows I’m not doing this for the money). At the end of this article I am going to share a couple of organizations that came to me for some help.
This guy knows how to keep track of the ocean!
Ocean Updates
Now it’s time for some bad news: National Geographic, stalwart in their understanding of the natural world, has three pieces of information crucial to our greater understand of our Ocean’s problems.
In June, 2008 and in May, 2009 I wrote an entry on The North Pacific Garbage Patch and The State of our Oceans respectively. The North Pacific Garbage patch entry was largely about the fact that plastics do not decompose and meander for years in oceanic stasis around an unimaginably large groggy abandoned forgotten vortex in the Pacific ocean. It touched on the fact that with each new tide that comes in on many islands, including the United States’ Hawaiian islands, a new disgorging of plastic is left behind in its wake. A big concern was that the plastics would not biodegrade for hundreds of years, floating seemingly forever. Also, I alluded to the idea that Bisphenol A (BPA) is likely the cause behind higher female birth rates.
National Geographic bestowed more knowledge to the community at large in this August, 2009 article entitledPlastics Do Break Down in Ocean, After All – And Fast. “Ha!” laughs the sociopath skeptic “I knew you were all left wing environmentalist crazies who make up problems that don’t exist. You all were worried that the plastic would never break down in the ocean and here is National Geographic proclaiming that they not only break down in the ocean, but they break down quickly. All of that worry for nothing.”
Although it is true that plastic does break down in the ocean at a much lower temperature than was previously expected, by all accounts this is not a good thing. Instead of our ocean water consisting largely of 2 things – Water and Salt – now we are making ourselves a little chemical cocktail that just so happens covers 70% of the entire planet. Our ocean was so old-skool, you know? I mean how plain can you be? Salt and water were the 2 main ingredients in the ocean when the dinosaurs reigned the planet for goodness sakes. Can we please get an upgrade?
Yes! The chemical companies of the planet are happy to oblige. Again, referring to our oceans as a “plastic soup” our NEW ocean is already consisting of large quantities of BPA and styrene trimer which are ingredients in our most inexpensive products. Which is part of the irony of course, because the cost they create are so exorbitantly expensive the human race just prefers to turn a blind eye to the problem rather than immediately and appropriately address it. What else is new? The article lists a myriad of everyday products that are made with our new oceanic chemical compounds. Also, the article briefly mentions that almost half of all seabirds eat plastic garbage on accident (you mean they don’t get any nutritional value out of our material defecation? Sounds to me like we need to build new birds!). Also, they throw out the arbitrary number of species (267) negatively affected by our plastic garbage. I love that it’s only 267, no more and no less. I don’t have any scientific data to back this statement up, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess that ALL ocean species are affected by our plastic garbage. But hey, who am I?
This research was conducted by a chemist named Katsuhiko Saido from Niho University in Japan. I like how he kindly sums up his feelings on his study: “Plastic, he said, should be considered a new source of chemical pollution in the ocean.” So Saido gets to go on my list of people we need to listen to (note: I did not use the words should, could, might consider… I used the word need). Also on this list (which you can find in my Ocean entry) are Callum Roberts, Jeremy Jackson, Steve O’Shea, Daniel Pauly, and Robert Diaz. Again, there is not other alternative than to physically raise these divine professors over our heads and crowd surf them directly to the leaders of the planet and force the leaders to listen to their professional advice.
Oh Prometheus, we know the pain of foresight all too well! Yet, we are still working on our ability to be as provocatively dressed as you!
Why? Why? Why were only a small handful of us given the capability of foresight on a planet covered in an identical species that has none. We are poor Prometheus, painfully aware of our gift of foresight, clearly acknowledging the horrifying tsunami of repercussions about to douse us, and we live on a planet inundated with Epimetheus, filled with afterthought and excuses. It is no wonder why Epimetheus was the cause of mankind’s misery by accepting Pandora as his wife! With no foresight, always creating a convenient excuse, our planet easily teams 10:1, no 1,000:1, no 1,000,000: 1 of Epimetheuses to Prometheuses. But I digress…
Plastics and their negative influence on the ocean is not new as I had written about the North Pacific Garbage 2 years ago. And I was not even one of the first to be aware of it. But the North Pacific Garbage Patch is only the grotesque superstar in a morbid production as National Geographic reports Huge Garbage Patch Found in the Atlantic Too. If I could give it a name, I’d probably give it the Mid-Atlantic Garbage Patch as it’s determined to be about the size of Cuba to Virgina. I thought this was a nice touch because both the Pacific and Northern part of the hemisphere were totally stealing all the limelight. Now we can at least enjoy a nice swim in some tropical chemical soup. Doesn’t that sound appealing? Well too bad, because the package is already delivered and signed for.
In all honesty, I don’t believe the North Pacific and the Mid Atlantic are anywhere near the total of these delightful little garbage vortexes. The Southern Hemisphere gets nowhere near the love that the Northern Hemisphere does and my spidey sense tingles at idea of more trash vortices down there – particularly the Indian Ocean, which seems to be more of a favorite to malnutritioned pirates than scientific study. So what are some details about Miss Mid-Atlantic in our first annual garbage patch beauty pageant? Well she is a bit more petite than her famous sister in the Pacific only weighing in at 520,000 bits of plastic per square mile while Miss North Pacific weighs in at a buxom 1.9 million bits of plastic per square mile. But, don’t discount Miss Mid Atlantic yet, she promises she’s working on her curves and before you know it, she’ll be just the same size as her sister, or bigger!
Ah yes, trash, billions of infinitesimally small pieces being forever absorbed into our ocean with reckless abandon by our species and the best part is most everybody doesn’t even think twice about it! The centuries, nay, millenia of human descendants that must inhabit the planet after us in gloom and despair riveted with malnutrition, diseases, and cancer will daily fall to their knees and look to sky and ask their creator why they must suffer so greatly. They will be certain that we, today, could not possibly have foreseen how we poisoned our very home. But if they have any record of history, they will know that all the evidence was there, clear and broad as daylight, and ignored by a vain species brimming with hubris. Yes, we deliberately ruined our only home – a mode of dust suspended in a sunbeam (score! Carl Sagan reference!). We turned the car on in the garage, ran a hose from the tailpipe to the kitchen, reversed the sewers, threw everything from the refrigerator onto the floor (2 weeks ago uncleaned), and replaced anything consumable with DRAIN-O. There is time to still curb this negative impact, but being a citizen in the United States I can tell you my government has a hard time tying its own shoe, let alone saving the world today.
You think I’m being obtuse, don’t you? It’s okay, you can think that, I won’t throw you in solitary confinement for a month for telling me that (unlike the Warden at Shawshank!). But I know, you think that I am exaggerating the situation. Of course, if you really do think that I know you never really read my entries and I know you never checked my sources. But to show you how accurate I’m trying to portray our situation, National Geographic has created a documentary entitled The End of the Line, which talks all about the state of our oceans today, and how it is truly The End of the Line. What line? How about the line of a non-primordial ocean without pollutants? Maybe we’re at the end of that line. Watch the documentary please – it has some of the people on my list of people we need to listen to.
Generosity Opportunities and Karma Points!
Now have I made you feel terrible enough? Good. Because it’s all your fault and the entire purpose of this entry was to make you feel terrible. Why would that be my purpose? Now you are sufficiently feeling guilty enough to donate, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Oh, I kid, I kid. If you’re feeling guilty then that’s your own stupid fault. This isn’t one person’s fault, but it’s our collective fault. I’m just writing about things that I feel are important and I don’t care if you donate money to anything or not. In fact – you can go and throw your money away on cheap plastic toys, and designer clothes, and big screen tvs and not donate ANY of it – I hear it’s all the rage these days. But let me tell you about two organizations that e-mailed ME PERSONALLY for some help concerning their organizations. I am greatly humbled by any organization e-mailing me on the topics of our oceans as if I was someone who even lived near one or even worked in the field of science. These are two organizations dedicated to the cause of saving our oceans. I decided to donate what I could to them, but I am totally nowhere near rich (does anybody using a wordpress account have any money anyway?) and these organizations could use your help. They also could use fanfare and you should tell people about these organizations so they can be more well known and get even more money.
Project Kaisei – A man creating a documentary following this project e-mailed me for media information. I actually had the honor to see the trailer for the documentary and I was very impressed. I would share the link but I do not see it on the internet yet. Kaisei is the flagship of a fleet of vessels that are doing the legwork on cleaning up the Garbage Vortices. On this site you will find some great videos and some relief that at least a small handful of people are doing something about this garbage patch problem. They could always use donations which are easy to give at the bottom of the page. I highly urge you to consider it, but I’m biased, I like clean plastic-free oceans.
…
The International Seakeepers Society – The organizer of the newsletter for the International Seakeeper’s Society actually requested to use some of my writing for their upcoming newsletter! This felt really good to me for somebody to appreciate my writing that much. So look for me on the first quarter newsletter of the International Seakeeper’s Society! Why should you support this group? They are incessantly collecting data from the ocean which we can turn into useable information to help protect our oceans through various methods. If Project Kaisei is our legs then The International Seakeepers Society is our eyes. They are giving us awareness of our surroundings making the frightening specter of ocean trauma tangible and something we will then be able to tackle. Check out the section labeled “Our expanding fleet” for more detailed information! I know! It’s super tough to decide which organization to donate to, so you might as well donate to both. After all, the both asked me for some help, and I always like to give more help than asked for.
Bonus Section for Word and Language Lovers
But wait! There’s more! If you are one of our first 100 customers you will receive a FREE… sorry. Really though, I have one more organization I would like you to donate to. After all, 3 donations is way luckier than 2. There will probably be a lot of good coming your way with 3 donations.
One Good Turn Deserves Another!
Librivox – I have totally become a Librivox fan lately and I have to tell you why. Librivox is an organization where anybody with a microphone (hey! That’s you!) reads stories that are in the public domain so that the rest of us don’t have to read them and can listen to them in the car or on the subway on our way to work. I have taken librivox up liberally on their offer of free audio books and have listened to everything from Grimm’s Fairy Tales to Rudyard Kipling to Mark Twain to Joseph Conrad. In fact (don’t tell anyone this because it’s super nerdy) I even PERSONALLY have read aloud multiple stories to add to librivox’s collection and they were super thankful and nice. And since one good turn deserves another (I always hear that idiom in the voice of the doorknob from the cartoon Alice in Wonderland) I am going to be super nice and thankful back by both donating and recommending that you donate to help librivox. In fact – librivox has never asked for donations before, but their site is getting so popular (because it’s so good!) that they are asking us to help cover the costs of free audio books. How can we say no? Help Librivox keep culture alive in the digital age! And go see if you can guess which stories I read!
Finally, I will leave you with a thought-provoking e-mail I left Merriam-Webster after attempting to search some definitions lately. Could you tell I was frustrated? If you loved language like I love language, you’d be frustrated too. Until next time!
m-w.com: For as long as I have used the internet I have used Merriam-Webster for my professional dictionary needs. However, as the years pass by, I am noticing a disturbing trend that must be addressed by a professional organization such as yourselves. It is so disturbing that I am e-mailing you with the hope and prayer that you might actually be unaware of how unprofessional and shockingly disrespectful to the user your website is.
While advertisements are crucial to the success of any website, no website uses quite the variety and cleverness of cruelty in their advertisements as your website. Whether those in charge of advertising are unaware of basic internet etiquette or are apathetic to it I am still unclear.
The ads found surrounding the page are natural and are to be expected. Even the pop-ups, as obnoxious and rude as they are to a user, are understandable. I guess you have to make money and if you truly believe pop-up ads are that successful then who am I to argue. But the fact remains that you are supposed to be a professional organization.
So when I choose your site (out of the many dictionary sites on the internet) to look up a word, and I type that word in the “Search” box, I do not think it is very professional of you to show me a PARTIAL definition to a word while an advertisement that could easily fit in the corner of my screen sits proudly in front of the definition purposefully obscuring it ensuring seething hatred toward whatever is being advertised and your website for participating in such rude advertising.
And when you finally do get the full definition, it is still surrounded by ads for Google and Bing hardly distinguishable from the definition. But what truly makes Marriam-Webster unique in their advertising is after you search for your definition and hunt for the tiny “skip this ad” button hidden to the side. Finally, the definition you have so longingly come for lay in front of you in its entirety and it is possible to begin to read it. And just when you do begin to read the definition a box from the corner of your site comes flying to the center of the screen, again, yes again, obscuring the defintion until you click the tiny x to make it go away. Then at last, I am bestowed the honor of the definition in which I originally came.
The only websites that I have seen using such Machiavellian advertising tactics have been pornographic websites and infomercial sites. I hope your group remembers that you are attempting to appeal to an intelligent audience that actually cares about the definition of words and the advertising tactics you are using is flying in the face of what any intelligent person would consider respectful advertising.
Afterwards I got an automated response that promised a reply within 24 hours. It’s been like 168 hours, oh well.
In one of my previous posts I wrote that athletes from Sparta were given historical credit for being the first to discard clothing for competition in ancient Greece. It is now generally accepted that this occurred as early as the 8th or 7th century B.C. (see also Aileen Goodson’s “Therapy, Nudity & Joy”). Spartan women were involved in athletic competitions and also regularly exercised completely nude (the subsequent post). But the open Spartan attitude towards nudity wasn’t shared in the ancient world.
In the last three centuries BC Sparta undergone the profound political, social, and economic changes which had the effect of levelling much of the city’s old distinctiveness and turning it into a typical provincial Greek city. There were signs of limited ‘restoration of the ancient customs’ of Classical Sparta under Roman patronage. Roman consul and a noted historian Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus wrote in his “Roman History” that when Caesar Augustus visited Sparta in 21 BC he ‘honoured the Spartans by messing together with them’ (see “Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: a tale of two cities” by Paul Cartledge and Antony Spawforth). Bettany Hughes (“Helen of Troy: goddess, princess, whore”) suspected that one of the aims of Augustus’s visit was an odd kind of sado-tourism which attracted visitors from across the Roman Empire. Spartan boys were whipped and girls raced naked for delectation of the audience.
It should be noted that
Romans, like all the other peoples of the ancient world apart from the Greeks, had a strong taboo against being seen naked in public, and this seems to have persisted throughout their long history. Under the empire, with the increasing popularity of the public baths, nudity gradually became more acceptable— at least for men, although probably only while they were actually bathing. Outside the baths, on the other hand, to appear nude in public remained as unthinkable as ever for a respectable Roman man or woman. (“The Roman nude: heroic portrait statuary 200 B.C.-A.D. 300“ by Christopher H. Hallett)
Christopher H. Hallett describes the slave market as major connotation of public nudity for the early Romans, since for in Antiquity slaves were very often displayed naked to buyers.
Slave Market in Rome by Jean-Leon Gerome (c.1884)
So already in the Roman era the connotation of nudity changed – from athletic competitions to slave markets and some kind of weird tourism.
I just came across this pictures and I am in awe…. Rihanna looks so hot in these pictures its unbelievable! I hope she does more photo shoots like this! Do you think these are her hottest pictures?
Do you remember the pull-ups commercial from TV? The catch phrase was “mommy wow, I’m a big kid now!” Well, pull ups are training diapers. They are pulled on like underwear for children who are being potty trained and unlike normal diapers they allow the child to “feel” wet when they wet their pants.
Yesterday evening, I took a wet pull-up off of my son Matthew and asked him to use the potty. After he finished his expedition to the potty chair he came back into the living room where I had gotten out a new pull-up and pajama pants. I asked him nicely to please put them on and then walked into my room. Not thirty seconds later my bedroom door opened and my wife asked, “Why is Matthew naked?” As you can imagine I was wondering the same thing. After all I had specifically asked my son to get dressed. I went out into the living room and spoke to my son and offered to help him get dressed. He then started to yell “I want to be naked” over and over again and proceeded to run out of the room.
Once I had finished laughing at this statement and had relayed my boy’s message to my wife I gathered up his pajamas, socks, and pull-up and started to dress him despite his very vocal protests regarding his need for nudity. Somehow this sly little guy did an evasive maneuver and escaped wearing nothing but a pull-up and pajama pants. Once again he started running around and yelling about the benefits of being a nudist.
This time my wife had the idea of let him run. After all, we both knew that it would be a matter of time before our little guy learned his lesson. And guess what happened; not two minutes later my son was holding his shirt because he was chilly and was requesting my help.
You see my son is two and a half years old and as I sit to write this and it is January. Not exactly the best nudist or topless weather (not that nudism or toplessness is ever good). Also he is a little young to be deciding what is best for himself in regards to clothing choice. This funny little parenting episode led me to thank my God that He does not let me always get my own way. God has said no to many of my requests and I have to wonder if He hasn’t chuckled a little bit, shook His head, and said, “kids!” “If you only knew what you were asking for you wouldn’t ask.”
I mean think about it. Matthew was just looking at the now. This will be fun, now. I can experience freedom, now. Being naked is a good time, now. But then something happened. He got cold and realized Daddy wasn’t just a big meany. Daddy knew he would be cold and was looking out for his son’s best interest.
So here is the challenge, next time God says, “NO”, realize that your Daddy is looking out for your best interest. Just because we desire something that is good does not mean that we desire something that is good for us. Just as I knew the outcome of my son’s nudist running: he would get cold. So does our God know the outcome of our desires and if that outcome can harm us or harm our relationship with God, then there is a good chance God will say no.
A police officer who was sacked after begging colleagues for sex has lost her unfair dismissal claim.
[Jessica Parfrey, sacked after five months, allegedly told her boss: "I'm 19, what is wrong with you?" / The Daily Telegraph Source: The Daily Telegraph]
Officer 19 when she propositioned colleagues
She offered to have sex in toilet and fake evidence
Commission rejects claims she was only joking
Within days of being posted Jessica Parfrey propositioned her supervisor to have an affair because “everyone knows you’re supposed to fall in love with your buddy”.
A month later, after he turned her down, she told him: “Can’t we just f***? I am a 19-year-old girl, what is wrong with you?”
The Industrial Relations Commission in Sydney heard that Ms Parfrey also offered an officer oral sex in a pub toilet and carpark and later propositioned another, saying: “I know you want me.”
Both men refused. She tried to call another colleague 12 times, left six text messages and then offered to help him study for his police exams by stripping off an item of clothing for every question he got correct. He refused.
Ms Parfrey was sacked from the police in September 2007, five months into her probation.
Assistant Commissioner Michael Corboy told her in a letter that her conduct had been “entirely inconsistent” with the standards expected of an officer.
However, she claimed her dismissal was unjust and argued that the majority of the alleged sexual harassment took place outside work during drinks with workmates.
John Grayson, deputy president of the Industrial Relations Commission, refused yesterday to reinstate her, rejecting her claims that she had been joking.
He said he believed her former colleagues at Waratah local area command, near Newcastle.
Ms Parfrey, who was not in court, has been working as a barmaid.
She graduated from the Goulburn police academy in May 2007 but she failed two subjects in her associate degree in policing at Charles Sturt University and had to fight to overturn a two-year study ban.
The commission also heard that during her probation she told another officer that she wanted to attend the scenes of fatal traffic accidents because it would “f*** up her head” and she could use it for a hurt-on-duty claim.
She also offered to lie in a suspected drink driving case, the commission was told.
While out on patrol, she and another officer saw a suspected drink driver standing 100 metres from his car.
She offered to say she had seen him behind the wheel, the commission was told.
Ms Parfrey’s solicitor, Stuart Grey, said she may appeal.
Project Kaisei – A man creating a documentary following this project e-mailed me for media information. I actually had the honor to see the trailer for the documentary and I was very impressed. I would share the link but I do not see it on the internet yet. Kaisei is the flagship of a fleet of vessels that are doing the legwork on cleaning up the Garbage Vortices. On this site you will find some great videos and some relief that at least a small handful of people are doing something about this garbage patch problem. They could always use donations which are easy to give at the bottom of the page. I highly urge you to consider it, but I’m biased, I like clean plastic-free oceans.
The International Seakeepers Society – The organizer of the newsletter for the International Seakeeper’s Society actually requested to use some of my writing for their upcoming newsletter! This felt really good to me for somebody to appreciate my writing that much. So look for me on the first quarter newsletter of the International Seakeeper’s Society! Why should you support this group? They are incessantly collecting data from the ocean which we can turn into useable information to help protect our oceans through various methods. If Project Kaisei is our legs then The International Seakeepers Society is our eyes. They are giving us awareness of our surroundings making the frightening specter of ocean trauma tangible and something we will then be able to tackle. Check out the section labeled “Our expanding fleet” for more detailed information! I know! It’s super tough to decide which organization to donate to, so you might as well donate to both. After all, the both asked me for some help, and I always like to give more help than asked for.
Photos: Copyright © Micheal Thompson / Copyright © GQ 2010
