Skip to main content

JibJab with Katie

I have been seriously swamped and falling behind in my goal of three posts per week. I will try to catch up forthwith!

For my last post, I was doing a little bit of procrastinating while slogging through some writing that needed doing for work. (I really hate writing at work, which might be a surprising revelation given that I voluntarily write in my free time as a hobby blogger. The difference is that when I'm blogging I get to use fun words like "forthwith", but acceptable science writing is very dense and precise which makes it very dry. In blogging, I get to use synonyms if I'm talking about the same thing for a few paragraphs. In science writing, it's expected that you use the same term as many times as you need to: the most accurate term must be the best term, no matter how redundant or boring it makes the text sound.) My usual place to go is to watch the previous night's episode of The Daily Show, but Katie and I have been doing a good job of late watching that almost every night. So I went to JibJab, which often has fun political animations, to see if they had anything new since the last time I had visited.

It turns out they have a new toy, where you can upload personal pictures that get woven into the animation of your choice, including their most recent one on the presidential election. I thought this was a hoot, so I did it with a photo of Katie and then posted the result on the blog.

I was a little worried because it seems like the bit (near the end) where Katie's face is pasted on in the role of "the voter" goes a little fast, but I was able to clearly see her face and know that it was her. I wondered if it would be clear to someone who was not expecting such a surprise.

I got the answer when I showed the animation to Katie. She watched and (like I did) enjoyed the political humor contained therein. (We've been fascinated by all of the drama that has unfolded over the primary and campaign seasons. We're sad it's over, but I feel heartened that the whole process will start again in a year or so for the 2012 election.)

When it got to the place in the animation where her own face appeared on screen (on the body of "the voter"), Katie did not react. She seemed entirely unfazed, but it turned out that her subconscious was paying attention. The recognition that something seemed familiar yet out of place eventually bubbled to the surface in one of her unfiltered and delightfully naive (cynics might say "typical blond") comments that I absolutely adore:

"Was the voter character supposed to be Hillary Clinton? She really does look a lot like me."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v...

Max the Model

Katie sometimes talks to Max about all the things he can grow up to be. "Will you grow up to be a scientist like Daddy, or a lawyer like Mommy?" she will query. In recent days, though, we think Max might aspire to be a model. He LOVES the camera. Point it in his direction, and he is mesmerized by the big lens, giving it a big smile. He will sit for long series of photographs, changing his expressions constantly so we'll be sure to get a good one. This is Katie's recent favorite series (mostly because she thinks he looks so cute in the outfit): This is my favorite series, based purely on the dynamic range of emotions that Max is capable of. I am especially fond of the last picture. So cute!

A Little Night Music

I've been in Boston this week at a scientific conference. I've spent nearly all of my time at the conference, but was able to get away a couple of times to see friends. One night off I went out for pizza with Ekrem and Leanne (and their adorable kids). We went to Stone Hearth Pizza , whose head chef is the brother of Bob, one of my labmates in Minneapolis. (He wasn't at the restaurant the night we went, sadly.) Ekrem and Leanne are moving to their new house in a week, and I helped them out by consuming the remainder of a bottle of scotch that they keep at their house for me. I felt very proud of myself for accomplishing this noble task. Last night I went to see Andrea perform in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music , one of my favorite musicals. Beforehand, I had dinner with fraternity friends Jan, Jeannie, David, Emily, and Ian. Dinner conversation was wonderful in that MIT-nerdy way that I greatly miss sometimes. At the end of the meal, for example, my fortune coo...