That Lake to the Right of the Space Needle

I am a sucker for PhotoShop tricks.

When I saw this article on making fake model toy photographs, I had a little psycho-flashback to the good old days when Dad would drag us all along to his raging model railroading shows at the Clovis, New Mexico Po-dunk City Mall and make me cart around these gi-normous honkin’ train tables made out of cheap-ass splintery hardware store wood that he didn’t bother sanding on the legs "because no one looks at that", but took enough time to paint a lovely shade of honey-stain so I could find the splinters in my hands after half-balancing the table on my eight year old head while he wratcheted the legs on and bitched at me for not being able to hold it all level.

My favorite part of Dad’s mis-begotten eight-table grown-up version of a franken-lego? Was not that of all the things to spend time miniaturizing, he choose the most tumble-butt-ugly area of New Mexico. No, it was that the entire grand ‘illusion’ was finished off by a giant, mud-brown curtain that hung down IN PLEATS from the top edge of the table down to the floor. And it was held on with velcro.

I honestly don’t know what twisted part of me saw this article and went "Wow! I HAVE to know how they do that", but man, it was LOUD, and I just had to try it .

Apparently, I have way too many personal photos on my work computer. This is a shot I took from the top of the Space Needle while playing hookey from work last month (What? Like you’ve never done it? I wasn’t getting paid.).

That boat is adorable - but that little Pepsi sign? It’s just model-esque enough to give me shudders, remembering the plastic 1945-era 7-to-11 convenience store model that was my one and only exercise into what I can only describe as Jules’ Existential Exploration of Salvador Dali and his affect on the Super-Glue/plastic medium.

I spent about five-seconds on it this and this, and they both just make me go, "Meh."

What do you think? Does it make you want to try poking the buildings to feel see if they’re made of foamcore before the cranky 60-yr old in an engineer hat looks up from his switchboard to glare at you and yell "DON’T TOUCH MAH TOYS!!"

Or is it just a blurry photo of a boat?

And Laundry. And Eating. And my husband. I’m so bad.

This is a sketch I drew in 1996:

In Photoshop, about a million tweaks and layers later:

Aaaand in Illustrator, using Live Trace, rock-awesome effects & half as many layers:

Wow. Now I wish I hadn’t quit drawing ten years ago. Maybe I WOULD be working for Elfquest…damn it.

Oh, and for a cheap laugh - some of my best geeky Star Trek drawings are now posted in the new “Sketches” album.

Non-descript headlines such as “Network neutrality revived in the House”, "Net Neutrality Counterattacks” and “Protect Internet neutrality” make my brain go, “JARGON! DIFFICULT LEGALESE! BOR-RING DRIVEL YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND!”

As a result, I have ignored the topic of Net Neutrality for over a year, based purely on the simple and supremely dumb definition below:

Net Neutrality (n.) Scary word. Technobabble indicating highly complex and therefore intimidating subject seen in news alerts but ignored in favor of latest DaVinci Code Google Puzzle. [syn: smartypants gobbledygook] [ant: …um, what?].

Wherever I came across these words, my eyes would dart away as quickly as possible, as if avoiding a direct glance at an online car wreck whose victims could be trusted to more knowledgeable individuals.

Finally, I got tired of seeing it all the time. It bugged me. A lot. So I started reading a little bit about it, and really, the whole thing’s quite simple. Here’s my new and informed definition:

Net Neutrality (n.) the Internet’s 1st amendment. The freedom for anyone to search, access, work, play, download, post, publish and purchase what they want via the Internet [syn: liberty] [ant: suppression]

People, Net Neutrality is like internet AIR. And there are some big ass companies who want to buy it, brand it and restrict it. They want BUY YOUR FREEDOM, and I’m sorry, but I have a HUGE PROBLEM WITH THAT.

If you A) use the internet (hello, you’re here) and B) would prefer to keep the ability to make up your own mind about, well, anything really, you might want to look into this. Do your own research or use my links, but definitely look into this.

There is an online petition at http://savetheinternet.com/ where you can find news, information and an awesomely easy tool for writing your congress people directly.

And you don’t have to pay them a penny.