… they keep their boots on.

The snow is lovely, bright and deep / but she has promises to keep / and miles to go before she sleeps / and miles to go before she sleeps.

Frost’s classic poem is, of course, haunting in its original form, but is it any more haunting than a cold winter afternoon spent trying to entertain candy-cane-jacked, snow-mad kindergarteners who have already declared that they are ‘NOT SLEEPING UNTIL SANTA COMES MOMMY YOU CAN’T MAKE ME’? Is it? IS IT?

It is not. Apologies to Frost, and to any poet who insist that mortality is a darker and more haunting theme than is the batshittery of children at Christmastime, but no, it is not.

*****

That photo was taken with my much-beloved Nikon, and then buffed and tweaked and decorated in Piknik, and will be cross-posted to Intel Canada’s Facebook page as an example of capturing your children in their funniest moments – in their funny and decidedly batshit moments – during the holidays. They have a contest going on right now and through the holidays (remember?) and you can upload your own photos and videos and win cool stuff. You like cool stuff.

Also, you can watch me be a know-it-all on video. If you prefer to watch me being more of an idiot, you can just watch this:

Which is really an excellent lead-in to asking you to vote for me for this here thingamaward. Unless extreme dorkitude really puts you off, in which case I played that hand badly. Oh, well.

There are limits to self-indulgence, none to self-restraint. – Gandhi

(Photographosophy, Gandhi Totally Should Have Tried Some Cake Edition)

(Hey! You can enter this Windows 7 phone (plus chocolate!) giveaway every day! Here, too! And? The comments are really, really awesome and full of great ‘encourage your kids to embrace the idea that less is more‘ ideas and, also, very interesting information about combat strategies for robot hamsters. So, you know, even if you don’t care about the phone, come weigh in on CYBORG RODENT WARS.)

(Canadians! You can totally enter this contest over at Living Well Mom Moments and maybe win $5000, which can buy you ten of those Windows 7 phones. Or, just go watch me be dorky on video and snicker quietly to yourself.)

(WUBBY.)

(Further to yesterday’s reflections on the divine…) If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better state this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal. — Aristotle, Metaphysics (XII.1072b24) (emphasis mine)

(Also…) Philosophy, is the talk on a cereal box / Religion, is a smile on a dog / I’m not aware of too many things / I know what I know if you know what I mean (do ya?) — Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians, “What I Am.”

(Photographosophy, I’m Not Aware Of Too Many Things Edition.)

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach (Eleventh Thesis)

(Photographosophy, Future Activists Of The World Unite With Your Loveys And Take Over Edition.)

(This time next week, I’ll be in Lesotho – I am traveling there this weekend, via, of all places, Napa Valley – contemplating this very thesis, and resisting the very strong urge to fall back on interpretation when confronted by very real action. Wish me strength in this effort.)

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.
— Albert Einstein

(cf. the Tutu Story, and What Is Photographosophy?) (Photo credit: JenIsJen, who has posted other amazing #tutusfortanner photos at her Flickr page, which you should totally check out.)

(PS: I totally wore that outfit on CNN, you guys. I wore a different one to the Today Show, though, because I like to mix it up like that.)

For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously. - Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science, section 283.)

(From the Photographosophy files.)

There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results. – Judith Butler (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity)

(So I was thinking about Wordless Wednesday, and about how I can never, ever, eliminate words entirely from a Wordless Wednesday, which defeats the purpose entirely, and then I thought, why not just use the pretext of Wordless Wednesday – posting random pictures [in my case, of my children] with no commentary – and get around the whole ‘Wordless’ thing by using someone else’s words. You know, spirit of the law rather than the letter and all that. And! Because I have this whole academic background in philosophy, from an education that, according to some, is being egregiously wasted, why not just dredge up random remembered bits of philosophy and fling them at those photos and see if the resulting mash-up makes any sense. And if it doesn’t, all the better, because what’s philosophy for, right? Right.

I’ll call it Photographosophy, Kinder Edition – TM! – and it will be awesome, not least because it will justify the entirety of my education.)

My daughter on Saturday:

My daughter on Sunday:

Any questions?