Liz Lately #32

Liz Lately @ hej.gay

I got images made for this! I mean, an image. I can’t be bothered to edit images for previous posts right now. The images will change later, as I get used to editing photos again, but dude. I’m really happy about this (more below).

I’m still gonna post music videos because it’s a way I can share the types of music/songs I like in a more natural way (as opposed to creating posts dedicated to music and only music; I’m not that into it).

I like this one for the sensory input the song provides. It took me a few times to understand it, but after looking at the lyrics, I realised it’s about a girl (the prom queen) who’s dreaming about her future, but grows up and has a not-so-great life. She’s depressed and wearing a mask, and I rather relate to it because I wear a mask a lot. My family puts on a façade, preferring to ignore things and remain in a bubble than to embrace what they don’t understand full-on.

What is the deal with kids watching kids play with stuff and do things?

This has been a trend for at least a year now, but…it’s really crazy. I think it’s adults who are exploiting their own kids like this, because the videos that go up are either toy reviews, kids wearing specific clothes on purpose (and not-so-subtly talking about them), or kids doing other activities. So I guess it’s, like, exploit-your-kids-on-KidTube-for-money or something.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BSbvE5GA0kv/?taken-by=thejanelively

Oh, yeah—KidTube and BabyTube are things. Just picture today’s talentless YouTube personalities as children, and there you have it.

I installed my photo-editing program on a flash drive 😀

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this ages ago??!! I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 via a lime green flash drive I got from Staples out of desperation for an external place to hold photos and things. I wound up using it to hold my font-making files so I could scan the sheets via my grandmother’s computer and do the rest on my [now-deceased] laptop instead of installing the program onto the laptop and messing with a bunch of cords.

One of the reasons I wanted this theme to have the index/main page like it is is because I intended to use images on the front pages, within the [manual] excerpts. Then, my laptop died because I spilled water on it and didn’t think to unplug it, and there introduced the world of online editing programs. I don’t care what anyone says: they do not compare to installed software.

So I’ll finally be able to add images I’m content with to my posts. I intended to add more photos as a whole—again, hence this theme, and why it’s a tad plain in terms of color and the setup. I told Georgie I wanted it to be quite basic because I wanted more color to come from photos.

Now, if only uploading photos wasn’t a pain in the ass…

On a side note, I really want to do personal stock photos.

There are Pexels.com and other sites offering free stock photos to do whatever with, but I want my own photos from my own things and photo-taking and all that jazz. I just…don’t quite know how to accomplish that, especially seeing as the lot of my photos are on my old hard drive.

General stock photos feel so impersonal to me, so…if you have any tips, please throw them at me!

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Comments on this post

OMG. You know, I’ve been scratching my head for the past year over my daughter’s obsession with watching other kids play with toys or family videos on YouTube. Most seemed to be personally recorded by the kid but occasionally by an older sibling or adult (could hear them in the background at times). The channels themselves were in general just odd and mildly uncomfortable to me. Every time I walked in my daughter would be watching some kids narrate while they played with My Little Pony toys. She has dozens of her own, so I didn’t get it. I figure part of it was the lack of social interaction (at the time there weren’t a lot of kids in the neighborhood, more recently that’s changed).

She was banned from YouTube for a while mostly due to the fact that it’s extremely hard to monitor the kiddo sometimes (walked in on some really weird videos a few times when grandma was supposed to be watching her) and set her up on a Netflix kids account, but she always finds ways to sneak a laptop or phone somewhere to watch YT. Thankfully she’s moved on a bit from some of the weird videos onto more established channels (mostly video game let’s play types), but I still never understood the toys thing.

Yeah, parents just let technology to parent for them. It’s enough to pull out of my hair just because parents don’t bother taking the time to parent. Why have children if you can’t be the parent? I never understood it and then kids get addicted to technology and then it goes down hill from there.

Ugh, I’m so over kids + technology. I totally get exposing kids to tech because it’s such a rapidly growing part of our lives (and these kids WILL have jobs that require a lot of tech knowledge), but that doesn’t mean your kid needs to be watching tv or playing games or whatever it is they do while the parent(s) grocery shop. It drives me CRAZY. I grew up in a fairly tech-savvy time (born in 1997), but even then I wasn’t playing my Nintendo DS in Wal-Mart.

In my opinion, the line between actively parenting and simply distracting your kid is almost gone. I work in retail, so I see a LOT of parents just give their kid a phone when their kid gets fussy instead of properly teaching them polite public behavior. These kids will grow up to be nightmares.

Ah, I want to use my own stock photography as well but don’t have the motivation to put together high quality pictures. It’s much easier to find a stock photo that accomplishes what I need. I enjoy Unsplash because they have a wide selection of really high quality photos (all uploaded by the original photographer too). Maybe when I travel more I’ll use my own stock photos, ha.

I use my phone during family get-togethers because sometimes I need that focus/distraction for sensory purposes, but…my sister doesn’t even, like, hug or talk to me since she has her iPad. She relies on it and doesn’t spend time with the family—and the difference is that she’s a kid; I’m an adult. Reminds me a lot of this:

I vary between Unsplash and Pexels on occasion, but it still feels weird and impersonal to use someone else’s photos. 😅😔