How to Perfect the Art of Taking Facebook Photos: A Step-By-Step Guide

You may think that something as simple as taking profile photographs of yourself to post on Facebook (or any other social media website) is a simple process that requires very little preparation.  Well, that's where you're dead wrong.  If you don't take profile pictures properly, not only will your smiling, perfectly in-focus and naturally lighted photographs fail to capture the true depth to your character, but you will be dubbed a social pariah for the remainder of your sad, miserable life on the internet world.

But never fear, my tender newbs!  Auntie Keisha is here to guide you through this complex and delicate process so that you too may have the skills to let your true self shine through!

A quick note before we begin:  this guide is for webcams only.  If you are one of the folk who is lucky enough to have parents that will buy compact, brightly colored digital cameras for you, you will have to seek out another guide that will more poignantly illustrate the proper technique for standing in front of the bathroom mirror while holding the camera slightly above your head.  The same goes for cell phone cameras, which employ a similar technique as digital cameras but must include the entire phone and most of the reflected bathroom in the picture.

With that said, let's begin!

Step 1:  Primp!
You may think that, to best capture your personality, you should take a picture of yourself looking as natural and casual as possible.  WRONG!  Before you take your picture, it's very important to make sure that your pores are clear, your makeup is flawless, and your hair is that perfect balance of coiffed and messy that shows that you care about how you look but not too much.  This last part is VITAL.  If your hair is too well-kept, you might look shallow; but let it be too messy, and you'll look like a slob!

Don't have makeup?  Nothing a little tweaking with some pirated image editing software can't fix!

Without digital touch-up:

 

Ew, gross!

Now let's see it with digital touch-up:

 

Beautiful!

Step 2:  Accessorize!

Along with Step 1, Step 2 involves insuring you look your very, very best in your profile pictures, even if you've just been sitting around at home eating Cheetos all day!  This creates the illusion that you always look like that--no sweatpants or unadorned collarbones for you!  But, as in Step 1, this look must look effortless.  No matter how many hours you might have spent in front of the mirror prior to snapping the pic, it must look like you just stumbled in oh-so-casually and just happened to take a minute out of your busy day to upload a quick pic.  No biggie!

 Look at this slob!  No accessories at all!

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!

Step 3:  Working the Angles

Now that you're all beautified and ready for your close-up, it's time to actually sit in front of the camera and start working it!  Don't get too hasty, though!  A good angle is just as important as a good face.

When working the angles, your options are virtually limitless, but there are two basic approaches that will always give you a consistent, tried-and-true look.  The first is the seductive approach:  looking the camera square in the eye while your mouth is partially opened and your face is slightly tilted to one side (which should always be your good side, of course!).  If you aren't sure what you're good side is, just experiment until you find it!  Here are some examples of the seductive approach:

Sexy!

The second approach is the broody or thoughtful approach.  Use this when you want to emphasize how deep and contemplative you are.  The trick here is to never look directly at the camera--this shows that you're too deep in your own world to even care that your picture is being taken!  Here are some examples:

What a deep and philosophical person!

Remember:  never, under any circumstances, are you to position your face straight on at the camera or smile.  You're too disaffected for that!

Hideous!  This person is neither sexy nor thoughtful!

Step 4:  Spicing those colors up!

You may notice that your picture, with its natural lighting and realistic skin tones, looks totally drab.  It isn't indicative of your spicy personality at all!  But don't worry, this can be fixed with a little photo-manipulation!  Simply by sliding the color scale to one extreme or the other, you can create a portrait of a fun, quirky scenester or of a deep, contemplative thinker:

The one on the left says "What an alternative and individualistic person!" while the one on the right says "What an intelligent and no doubt creative individual!"

Neither of these suit your fancy?  Nothing applying a few generic special effects won't fix!

The possibilities are only limited by the number of free effects that come with your preferred image editing software!

Step 5:  Putting it all Together!

Now that you've perfected your makeup, your accessories, your angle, and your photo effects, it's time to produce the perfect profile pic that will tell everyone just how intriguing, beautiful, and creative you are with only minimal help from a computer!

Now THAT'S what I call a Facebook profile pic!

OH NO IT'S A GIRL COMPLAINING ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF TITS IN COMICS! QUICK, CLICK THE STUMBLE! BUTTON!

I'm gonna blow the dust off my keyboard and rant for a second, because this is my bloody blog and nobody reads it but me and my mother and sometimes Cody if he's been an especially good boy that day.  I'm going to rant about comic books so if you somehow stumbled upon this blog on accident (you poor bastard) and don't want to hear a woman with real actual boobies and (gasp) opinions about comics then you should probably stop reading now because only one of those things is going to show up on this page (hint:  it isn't the boobies).

Women are sexualized in comics.  I know it, you know it, even your dog knows it and he doesn't even have a concept of sexuality because he's an animal who's perfectly happy humping your footstool.  If this is news to you, you probably don't read comics (or, if you do, you probably don't read superhero comics).

If, somehow, by some magic, you have no idea what I'm talking about then let me refer you to this livejournal post which includes excerpts from a Wizard How to Draw series (the post is several years old but it still shows up as one of the first google results for "how to draw superheroes" so that's good enough for me).  While the post itself was disturbing enough what really irked me were some of the comments from guys whining about how the gals who were complaining just need to shut up because sex sells and comics are mostly read by guys anyway and it's fantasy and it's supposed to be exaggerated and hey, now, guys are idealized in comics too and rar rar rar Idon'thavegirlypartssoI'mnotoffendedandIlikecomicssoobviouslyyouarewrong.

I'm not stupid; I know that sex sells.  And I know that the super hero genre was basically created to pander to socially awkward guys who wanted to insert themselves into larger-than-life fantasies where they have super powers, huge muscles, and are surrounded by hot, lusty women (why else would so many superheroes have a "mild mannered" secret identity?).  And I know, too, that traditionally girls didn't read comics because they were a "boy thing".

But gender roles are changing.  Despite the continuing stereotype that girls don't read comics, I'm not the only girl in the comic shop anymore.  And I have money.  For comics.  That are for me and not a gift for my brother/father/male cousin/son/uncle/boyfriend/boyfriend's brother/male prison inmate who has become my pen pal.


Girls are reading comics all the time.  Hell, girls are even starting to WRITE comics!  WHOA BAM!

But like everything that girls start doing that was traditionally a "guy thing", we're mucking things up for everybody with our lousy complaints and opinions.  You'd think that, in a subculture which revolves around escaping into a fantasy world where you're a hunk who can talk to women, real, actual girls with real, actual girl parts who are actually excited to talk to you and can actually talk about stuff you're interested in instead of shoes and makeup (because that's all we talk about, you know) would be a godsend.  But nooooo...we girls have to ruin everything by complaining about how super heroines are unrealistic and sexualized and oooooooh!

I don't want to read a comic where there's a tit or ass shot on every page.  I don't want to have to pretend not to be offended by the giant, unrealistic bozongas on Power Girl (which is why I've never read Power Girl) or the fact that a woman who is supposed to be physically fit, agile, and powerful has hardly any musculature and a pair of big, round chest melons that never seem to sag or fall down into her armpits even a little bit (trust me, I have DDs, they don't look like this [and, besides, that's just poor design--her sternum is WIDE open if someone decided to shoot and/or stab her...]).

But I want to read comics.  I want to hand my money over to the companies that make comics.  And I want to tell my friends about comics that I love.  Comics that aren't all Vertigo titles.  Comics about superheroes.

What irks me is that even former DC president Paul Levitz talks about girls not reading comics like it's beyond everyone's control, like girls just don't like them they way a little kid might not like broccoli so it's no use trying to get girls to read comics (at least not superheroes--girls have been flocking to the less misogynistic genres like Vertigo's comics, proving that it isn't the comics they hate).  But we're sitting here telling you that, yes, we want to read your comics.  We want to give you our money, and we're telling you exactly why we haven't given it to you yet.  Stop ignoring us and pretending like we're the ones ignoring you!

All I ask is that the characters that are supposed to relate to me--the characters in whose roles I'm supposed to want to insert myself--don't look like Playboy centerfolds.  I don't care if they have big tits, I don't even care if they hang out, just give me a couple fewer ass shots (or, hey, at the very least give me some more Batman ass shots; I'm not picky), a little more individual personality, and a little less using references from softcore porn.

I know you guys can do it.

Status Report

If this blog were a tamagotchi, it probably would have starved to death or run away by now.  Of course, if it were a tamagotchi, I probably would have given up on taking care of its overly demanding pixellated ass and made my sister take care of it instead.  I am as much an irresponsible electronic pet owner as I am an irresponsible electronic blog owner.  It's like I hate the future or something.

I haven't written much because I've mostly been having an existential crisis during which I realized that I do not have my shit together.  You see this shit?  This shit is not together.  This is some Ex-lax shit right here.

And then I went home.  Which was mostly stressful because I got to see my family for about .5 seconds and then spent the rest of the time yelling at Cody and not finding a tuxedo jacket with tails for my Halloween costume because apparently nobody but me wants to dress up as Zatana.  Apparently I can be a slutty bumblebee, a slutty "mod" girl, and a slutty goth Raggedy Anne but not a slutty magician.  What, my breasts aren't magical enough?  I'm considering this one a personal attack against me, Halloween-stores-I-will-not-mention-by-name.  You know who you are.

But anyway!  Point is, today I finally (mostly) pulled my shit together.  I've got a couple of volunteer projects on my plate, the vague promise of a summer job if I kiss lots and lots of ass, and the slight possibility of an undergraduate research grant if I work my bum off kicking ass and taking names.  So, yeah, it's safe to say there's a lot on my plate and "blarg" isn't too high on the list.

But I'm not ditching this little side excursion of mine.  Mostly I'm just neglecting it like a flea-infested dog you've tied up in the backyard.  Eventually I will take that dog to the vet.  Just not today.  And probably not tomorrow, either.  Friday's looking kind of iffy too, and you know the vet's closed on weekends.  Eh, I'll get around to it.

College Survival Tip #1: Do Not Underestimate Campus Wildlife

I feel like my header is lying because I haven't actually spoken much about college at all (or boobies, for that matter, but if you take that promise very seriously prepare to be disappointed).  Well, I'm about to rectify that!

Being that I am in my second year in college, I feel like I am totally qualified to be considered an expert on the subject, so I'm compiling a list of college survival tips.  And the first one is right here!  Are you shaking with anticipation yet?

If you're already in college you're probably well into the first few weeks of your school year (in fact, if you're like me, you've probably already had your first taste [or reminder] of that oh-so-bitter little treat called the college exam), so these tips might just be a repeat of things you've already learned on your own.  If you're in high school, then you probably need these tips more because having blueprints to your anti-squirrel fortress will put you way ahead of your peers (but not ahead of the squirrels.  Those little bastards are always prepared.  Always.).  Preparedness is key!  If you're out of college or never went to college then these tips are of no use to you and I don't know why you'd be studying them because you are not going to be quizzed.  Not you, high school kids.  You are definitely getting a quiz.


College Survival Tip #1:  Do Not Underestimate Campus Wildlife

You may be looking at this first tip and wondering why I would find this important enough to put as tip numero uno.  Surely, you may be thinking, there are more important tips that should be placed before this one, like how to steal textbooks without getting caught or how to still look sexy while puking up your tequila shots.  And if you think that then you've already lost.

I'm mainly going to focus on squirrels here because the actual species you might encounter on your average campus will vary from region to region, but squirrels are evil, adaptable little bastards, and where there are trees, there are squirrels.

Now, some of you who haven't yet had encounters with campus squirrels might be scoffing a bit right now.  Surely, you may think, I'm just some city gal who hasn't had much contact with squirrels.  Which couldn't be more far from the truth; not only am I from a tiny rural village (that's right, "village", we're too small to even be called a "town"), but I've met some city squirrels and they are serious business.  I know squirrels.  But I've begun to think that campus squirrels are a breed of their own.

The first thing you need to understand about campus squirrels (and any campus wildlife, really) is that they've become desensitized to people.  Chances are, they're part of a long line of campus critters who were born on campus, left their offspring on campus, and will die on campus.  This ain't their first rodeo.

If you read that and thought "Oh, so they aren't afraid of people?  Cool!  Does that mean I can just walk up to them and feed them out of my hand or give them a loving pat on the head?" you might as well drop out of college right now because this kind of weakness will not be tolerated.  It's true that campus animals aren't afraid of people, but that doesn't mean they're docile.  It just means that they aren't afraid of people.  Meaning, if you fuck with them they won't scurry away while barking non-threateningly.  They will turn around and shank your ass.

There was this boy just minding his own business and walking to class when a squirrel who had a nest in the tree he was walking by threw an acorn at him.  This happens all the time, and most people just sort of ignore it, but this kid decided that "Hey, I'm not gonna let some dumb animal make a mockery of me!".  So he picked the acorn up and threw it back.  End of story, right?  A squirrel, only a small fraction of the size of a fully-grown human, would naturally just scurry higher up the tree and continue barking without risking its own safety, wouldn't it?

No, it wouldn't.  This squirrel ran down the tree, chased that motherfucker down, and bit his ass.  Like, literally took a chomp out of his rear end.  Why?  Because that squirrel wasn't afraid of that dude and it wasn't gonna take his shit.

The difference between you and a campus animal is that you only reside there part of the year.  Even if you have an apartment in town, your home is off-campus.  But the squirrel doesn't leave.  Its home is right here, where you walk to class, where you eat, and where you occasionally throw up out the window.  You are the invader and you are the enemy.  You reside here only because they permit you to reside here.

So respect them, and maybe they won't rise up and murder you.

But squirrels aren't the only animals that make campuses their homes.  So, before you go to school, make sure you know a thing or two about the critters you're going to be sharing your space with ("critters" being "animal species", not "frat boys" in this instance).  For example, on my campus we have a pretty sizable deer population (meaning I run into them when I'm walking to class through the campus woods every morning), which isn't a big deal for me.  But some of the city folk who come down here aren't quite as familiar with a little thing we like to call "rutting season".

And, if you have a campus lake, for the love of god don't eat any fish you catch out of there.  Campus lakes are pretty much 90% beer and pee and the other 10% pure motor oil.  Plus, college kids dump their unwanted pet fish in there all the time.  They once found a piranha in our lake on campus.  True story.

In conclusion, understand your enemy.  Don't feed, pet, pester, or eat the campus wildlife, and we might just all make it out of here alive.

I Can't Believe it Took Four Entries Before I Meantioned Blowjobs

Cody has to write an English paper about our generation's definition of love as evidenced through our popular culture (which makes me hate him for getting to write fun things while I have to study [read:  "pretend to study while writing a blog and reading webcomics"] for a smelly chem test that is smelly), and he left his document open (with nothing written on it.  Shame on you, Cody, you should be more like your hardworking girlfriend who never slacks off or puts off things until the last minute!), so I took the liberty to insert this little quip:

"Love is like a lovely sea of loving love.  I love my girlfriend.  She's part of our culture, right?  She has a blog now so I think that makes her media too.  She defines love as hitting me when I piss her off.  Which is a lot.  I love her a whole lot and I want to buy her a puppy.  And that is what I think love is.  The end."

Then he deleted it and wrote "Blowjobs".  Which is only one word and didn't even have any punctuation so I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly.  Honestly, it's like he doesn't want to pass English.  So I helped him again:

"Love is not caring when someone farts on your penis.  And not getting mad when they don't give you blowjobs even when you really want them.
 Love is what I feel when I look at Magic cards.  Love, and the beautiful sensation of ejaculation."

Cody's got this shizz in the bag.  But I don't want to be greedy with my awesome wisdom, so I thought of some more definitions for love.  Feel free to use these on English projects or Valentines cards or even leave them as saucy literature in bathroom stalls.  But if you do that prepared to get sued cause I am totally copyrighting this genius and making bank.

"Love is prestige classing."

"Love is still being willing to play Magic:  The Gathering with someone even though they hand you your ass on a silver platter every time."

"Love is paying rapt attention to someone while they rant for hours about boring things you don't actually have any invested interest in."

"Love is when the people at Jimmy Johns give you the bread ball they scoop out of the loaf and only laugh at you/wonder how high you are a little bit."

"Love is not being afraid to ask for the bread ball."

"Love is taking out the garbage after I just puked in it."

"Love is doing sweet things without expecting blowjobs in return."

"Love is sometimes giving unexpected blowjobs.  Sometimes."

"Love is pretending to give a shit about Secret Life of the American Teenager."

I'm like the most romantic person on the planet.  Forget zoology, I should totes go work for Hallmark.

Eight Fucked-Up Things I Thought/Did as a Kid

If an adult had the worldview of the average child I think he or she would be considered a sociopath, or at least a few crayons short of a Crayola 24-pack.  When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend named Sister Sally.  I don't remember a damn thing about her but apparently my parents remember every little detail of our imaginary friendship.  Every day I would tell them something new and crazy about Sister Sally--that she had grown new heads or had laser vision or that she had told me to kill the president to please Nerull, god of the underworld.  I'm sure they thought it was all cute and normal but had they been responsible parents they would have given me an exorcism just to be safe.  I think Sister Sally eventually moved to Milwaukee.  Which I'm pretty sure is code for the Infinite Layers of the Abyss.

Anyway, I was mulling it over today, and I compiled a list of really fucked-up things that I thought/did as a child.  Bear in mind that I was literally afraid of absolutely everything as a kid (Cody always makes fun of me for having never seen Neverending Story as a kid because I was too terrified of the dragon on the box) so most of this stuff is a list of totally irrational things that I was terrified of.

1.  I thought that teenage pregnancy was awesome.
Me and my childhood bestie used to play pretend a lot, and one of our favorite pretend scenarios was "teenagers", in which we pretended to be, you guessed it, teenagers.  Because being a teenager was like being a super hero to us.  But wait, there's more!  We liked to be teenagers who had had kids out of wedlock with our pretend boyfriends (who, presumably, paid pretend child support).  Our logic?  Our pretend selves had kids early because we didn't want to be old when we got to be grandparents.  True story.

2.  I convinced all of the kids on my block that the Boogeyman lived in my basement.
Being children themselves, they of course believed me.  But then one of the kids on my street had to ruin everything and tell me to prove it.  Left with no options and having by now even convinced myself that the Boogeyman resided in my basement, I informed everyone that the Boogeyman was a shapeshifter who took the form of my cat, Tipsy.  I don't remember if they believed me or not but I don't think anyone really wanted to play with my cat after that so my mission was probably a success.

3.  I thought that my toys would come to life in the middle of the night and murder me in my sleep if I didn't treat them well enough.
Most kids probably thought Toy Story was a fun, enjoyable movie about the strong bond of friendship.  But I saw it for what it really was:  a warning.  Instead of thinking that it was just a cartoon and not real, I became convinced that toys really did come to life when you weren't looking...and I assumed that if they had the power to move and speak, they had the power to kill.  I took really good care of my toys after that.

4.  I thought that, when my ears were ringing, it was aliens trying to communicate with me.
Your guess is as good as mine as to where this idea came from, but if there was any reason to be terrified of anything, it was good enough for me.

5.  I refused to sleep under anything thinner than a comforter, even in the sweltering Illinois summer.
The idea here was that thick blankets kept the monsters that lurked in the dark corners of my room from getting me.  But thin blankets were too weak.

6.  I thought that the term "balls" referred to boobs.  Therefore, girls had balls and boys didn't.
I didn't know what testicles were till embarrassingly late into my development, mostly because I went to a Lutheran school until eighth grade and our sex ed class consisted of "The Bible says don't have sex.  The end."

7.  I thought that I was capable of murdering my whole family.
I had this neurotic fear that if I didn't act right/didn't care about my family enough/played with dangerous objects that something terrible would happen and all of them would die and it would be my fault.  This is the sort of mental disorder most people would seek professional help for but it just seemed a totally legit fear for me as a kid.


8.  I thought that "prostitute" was a worthwhile profession, and wanted to be one when I grew up.
Seeing as I was a little kid and didn't know what sex was, I thought that a prostitute was just someone guys paid to go on a date with and pay attention to them.  That seemed really awesome to me, because even when I was little having a job where people threw money at me just for giving them the pleasure of my company seemed like pretty much the raddest thing ever.  My work ethic was terrible as a child.  Some things never change.

Damn this Horse is High. It's Like...a High Horse or Something.

So I was on yahoo checking my email when I saw this article on the little "Today" box (otherwise known as the "black hole of doom" for its uncanny ability to suck me in no matter how stupid/boring/totally divergent from my interests the article displayed is, and its ability to completely make me forget how stupid/boring/totally divergent from my interests the last article I got sucked into was...and its unwavering conviction that absolutely hilarious videos of cats chasing things are, in fact, news).  Aside from the fact that the article should have really only featured one question you should ask yourself before getting back with your ex (Did you guys ever break up?  If yes, then all signs point to no.), I didn't find too much issue with the advice printed within.  What did irk me, though, is that the article assumed that the person sitting alone, and most likely eating double mocha fudge ice cream with a shovel, contemplating the decision to take back the ex or not was female.

Now, I get it, I really do.  The target audience of these sorts of articles is female (hence why I was so quickly dragged in--hypocrisy, thy name is Keisha) and they aren't exactly being very economical by pandering to anyone other than that audience, but, by god, if I have a reason to bitch about anything I'm gonna bitch like my life depends on it!

What always grinds my gears about dating advice books, movies, TV shows, magazine articles, blogs, etc., is that the vast majority of them seem to assume that women are the incompetent ones.  Men are simple, drooling slobs who only want to get their respective D's wet, and it's women who come in with their bleeding vaginae and their sissy emotions and their overthinking brains and make complicated messes of relationships.  Why, if women could only think like men and not like women, then all relationship troubles would be solved!

What pisses me off about this is not just the fact that it's insulting to both women (for calling them giant sacs of drama and tears) and men (for being compared to a pack of unneutered, untrained dogs), but the fact that it puts all the responsibility of shitty relationships on women.  Your man didn't treat you well?  Well, obviously it was because you had sex with him too soon/didn't read his signals well enough/don't have enough self-confidence and therefore allow yourself to be treated like shit/didn't train your dog well enough.  I mean, with the unrealistic relationship expectations you had in your head, it's no wonder your man was as worthless as a giant turd (and your relationship decomposed twice as fast)!  Learn how to present yourself better so that you can attract the right kind of man, girl!

Don't get me wrong, I think that a lot of relationships fail because people have unrealistic expectations, and I do think that self-confidence is important and that if you keep attracting shitty mates then maybe you should take some time to do some reflection on why you only seem to be attracting the sort of person who's been squeezed through a rectum first.  But I don't think it's an exclusively female thing.  Newsflash:  guys can be clueless, unconfident, and emotional too.  And they can have a habit of attracting bad relationships the same way women can.

Case and point, this is the conversation I overheard while at the dining hall earlier today (I'm paraphrasing because I have a memory the average squirrel would pity...and yes, I may have eavesdropped on a private conversation.  Don't judge me.):

Guy (who kinda looked a bit like Ross from Friends and was just as dorky and clueless, so I'm going to call his love interest Rachel and his female friend Monica):  I just don't understand where I stand with Rachel.

Monica:  What's going on?

Ross:  Well, I tried to talk to her again, and she told me that she doesn't want a relationship right now.  I just don't get it.  She acts like she likes me and everything and I really want to be with her.
(Eavesdropper's note:  the key word here is "again".  Meaning, this wasn't the first time she'd totally shot this poor sap down.)

They started talking about some other things that I don't really remember because a belligerent blind guy started making a scene right next to where I was sitting (ah, dining halls...), but the moral of the story is that dudes are just as hopeless as girls.  No matter what your gender is, the sentence "I just don't want a relationship right now" translates into "I just don't want a relationship right now...with you.  And I probably won't.  Ever.  But I like the attention you give me so I'm gonna keep feeding you false hope so that you'll stick around, kay?" about 9 times out of 10.  And come next weekend the same guy will probably be sitting in the same dining hall with the same platonic friend whining about how Rachel was macking up on some other guy at a party and gave him her number and he just doesn't get it because she said she didn't want a relationship and WHY WOULD SHE PLAY WITH MY EMOTIONS LIKE THAT???


Point is, being pathetic and clueless and emotional when it comes to relationships isn't about gender.  For every girl you've seen sobbing into her moose tracks while her girlfriends pat her back and tell her to forget him because "he's just a dick" there's a guy sobbing big man-tears into a Miller Light while his buddies tell him to man up and forget her because "she's just a slut".

And if you don't believe me, talk to Cody about his romantic history sometime.  A big ol' ball of tragedy, that one.