ode to technology.

Family is important to most.

It is important to treasure those epecially candid and rare moments like these.

The 30 seconds you wish you captured but didn't is now possible with (insert free plug for Nikon SLRs or Panasonic HDV or Apple iPhone).

Here is one such satisfied customer..

"I love thee technology, you make me glee.
I love thee technology, you've changed me.
I can't organize my day, without a facebook message or a youtube clip,
Without a Blackberry in my pocket, or an iPhone at my hip.
Mac's are for graphics, and web, or kids like me with a fetish.
Pay overpriced, pay premium, go to the Apple store, GET INTO IT!"

LOL... i need a life (or do work). Til next time, geeks!

PS. You know you love the nerd talk! ooo yeah! ;)

pola je #trois

"happy road sessions" -joseph v.

polaroid moment #002

"the fool's moon" - by joseph v.

the choc-top experience.

Poem: Oh my-a, my-a, its July-a, how does your garden grow? -a joseph original.

Half of the year? Where, has it gone?!

I'm pretty sure ive done nothing wrong. ive lied, laughed, lived, cried, kissed, loved, fought, sung, danced, drank, smiled, been taken, changed, made comments, blogged (hehe), argued, contemplated, and now reflected.. amongst other things, i'm sure.

Anyway, it was my pops birthday on Sunday/today.. He is a 61 year old, with a full head of black hair. God bless my genes! Despite my hiccup-baldspot, i know the destiny for my scalp! Happy Birthday Father!

We went out for dinner on Sunday for La Birthday, had a feast at La Porchetta; went through the motions of eating my food, and any leftovers.

Now for dessert... being the untamed stallion that i am, i went against the flow of ordering a desert at LaPorchetta, and went to Hoyts over to next door and bought myself a Vanilla Choc-Top!

She smiled and said to me "Enjoy your movie!".. I strutted away from the cinema, looked back and said "Babe, The choc-top's all i'm after!" .. didn't actually happen. but i was thinking along those lines..

The point of this story is..

Life is like a box of choc...tops!

You can either be carefree, or careless, when you indulge yourself in its simple pleasures... Let me explain..

To be careless, is: To be a total moron and eat your choc-top without restraint and without boundary. Then once the movie is finished you'll find yourself in a total mess. Chocolate stained clothes. and ice cream where you least expect.

Or you can take precautionary measures beforehand, and be carefree... Plan out the course of action and reap the benefits. Your goal to watch the entire movie, at the same time as enjoying your Choc-top. You'll always come out on top, relatively unscathed, and pleasantly rewarded.

polaroid collage #001

T-L: Rebekah discovers the happiness in being a photographer.

T-R: An ice cream cake even Ronald would be proud of.

B-L:Chocolate-laced cheesecake. Black tea. Cold thursday-morn.

B-R:Christiana finds the simple pleasures of frothed milk.

mighty morphin pubescent teenagers.

So i've been listening to this song by Boyz II Men - Do You Remember (Lyrics | Listen), for the past 3-days on repeat. because a) It's a good song and b) i've been to lazy to change the CD since Friday-past.


Aside from marbles, Tazos & wanting to be the white ranger (fyi, that's Zordon on the left). This is what i remember... (insert hazy-timewarp effect)

I remember just after i learned how to write my name.. i used to write it anywhere & everywhere; that includes the musty-white roof of my parents car.. my parents told me off; but my childlike fear of my parents, insisted and persisted in saying, that i didn't do it.. when i clearly did.. It literally had my signature all over it lol I was 4.

Ah innocence... like the time i pulled out the cigarette lighter.. after the car was running for 5 mins.. I burnt my finger, and cried, and cried.. For those who don't smoke, or have never realised how that cigarette insigned knob actually works.. don't learn it the hard way :) I was 8.

Or like the time my fingernail fell off . That's gross, but how did it happen? i was digging a hole with a rock, smashed my finger.. behind a tree, next to the steel metal shed, near a playgroud, IN THE OUT-OF-BOUNDS area! DUN,DUN! My friend Avril d'costa, Christopher B, and Andrew Gadowski was there to witness this horifying and traumatic experience. I was 10.

Or in grade 6 camp, our group went out on a biking voyage, like all bad-ass 6 graders, we chose to stay at the back. Right in front of me was Sarah Sydzik. A pretty Polish blonde girl. The prettiest polish-blonde girl i ever sawed in my life.. loll.. long story short; she crashed into a bin, being the gentle'boy' (not man) i was, i helped her up. At breakfast, the next day, a letter was passed around, from table to table..

Saying "i want you bad!".. well, no.. not exactly.. but that's probably what it would write these days, cause kids are whack.. Iit said something along the lines of, "i like you, thank you.. yada, yada, go out with me?".. lol that was my first girlfriend lol.. I was 12.

It's fun to reminisce my pre-pubescent childhood. I honestly don't know why i don't do it more often..

I guess people lost in the day with working 40-hour weeks, students getting too encapsulated in their struggle for success, or getting too drunk that their childhood, or the hour before, gets too hazy to remember. Which is a real shame..

I'm sure i have more of these tales.

Oh, and i peed my pants in grade 2.. seeped and spread through the carpet, during reading time.

But I'll come back to it another day.

Enjoy your days boys & girls.

You are dismissed. :)

photo journal #001

"rolling clouds. spinning wheel." by joseph valdez.

the 80-year drive home

Got home relatively late last night, foolishly went on a frenzy of editing & uploading photos from my close friends 21st. Happy Birthday to you my dear (if you're reading this). Hope you had a great night!

On the drive home, was running out of petrol.. and here's the photo evidence. Had my camera in the car.. and everything i do these days, will coincide with me thinking if this is blog worth material.

On the left,, is my fill up on the pump. It makes me sad. That is all. That is usually a weekly thing. Boo on petrol! LOL. Bought a Ribena drink, softened the blow of the fuel prices, and all was relatively well after that :)

I read on a friend's Facebook nick over the week past, about being different. It goes something like this... "Everyone is trying so hard to be different when in fact everyone is the same for wanting to be different". It left me in a, "That's deep" kinda moment.. And it got me thinking slightly.. here was what i came up with:

Personally, i don't think being different is so bad.. wanting to be different from everyone else and not conforming with the rest of the world, are two totally different things. wanting to be different to make yourself known, is clearly not the same as stepping out and standing up for what you believe in. wanting to be 'different', i think, is an expression of individuality.. and if "not caring about what other people think", makes you flick your hair back and scoff... then there is clearly much to learn.

I can do it this way, or i can go down the lesser known, arts student, soul searching way...

This post just reminded me of a poem by Robert Frost, "The Road not Taken" (or The Road Less Travelled.) How untimely. I first heard this in a film, Dead Poet Society. Though it features Robin Williams, it's not as humorous as you might first think.. quite a thought provoking film. I highly recommend it, to anyone AND everyone! :) Anyway, here's the poem.. Enjoy!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet, knowing how way leads onto way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood

And I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference.

the legendary hamish & andy podcast

it is quite possibly the best. podcast. ever.

Check it out here, or search them in iTunes.
> Hamish & Andy Podcast

so you think you can blog?

Our Blogging Phase 2009
Preface by Joseph V.

If you've found your voice and found some way to express it, then by all means... who needs permission from anyone?

It's a blog, we're all bound to talk about ourselves, be it in the third person, or sometimes Joseph likes to talk in first person.

What it boils down to, is a freedom of expression that can't be tainted by foul words to psych.. Your opinion of how you- live the life, you've been graciously bestowed is a beautiful thing in itself. Everyone's journey is different, and we should feel enlightened that blogs are an outlet for that.

I've seen blogs with people that talk about market research.. (geez, how bored must you be?).. but hey, no need to hold that against mr.boring-market-research-guy.. we're all bloggers.. just one big, blog, bang.

that being said; everyone has their niche.. so stick with what you're good at.
be it.. being a rat, subtly hinting things, talking life, talking love, talking music, talking trash or using big words that you never really get to use in 'the real world'.

I hope that we all continue to blog, even on our death beds.. it's the next best thing to having a key & locket diary under my bed, or actually using your hand to write things on paper?! who the heck does that these days?!

i kinda liken it to "memoirs of a geisha"..

we're like geisha's and these are our memoirs.

(mind you, i've never read the book, its just logical)..

have a great weekend!

cheers,
-josiah