Photoshopping celebrities and models

I think we all know it goes on, but we often don't understand the extent to which it happens. Sometimes it's good to remind ourselves how ridiculous the images we see in magazines truly are.

At this link, we see a photo of Faith Hill (a well-known 39 year old musician), and the version of the photo that ran on the cover of Redbook after extensive photoshopping (you have to page down to see the pic):
Faith Hill and Redbook

At this link, you can interact with a flash website to see a breakdown of the changes that were made to a photo of a model as an example of how extensive the changes are with most modeling shoots:
Girlpower's "See the Bluff" campaign

And then of course there's the better known Dove video, which is a movie of a model being made up, photographed, and then finally photoshopped:
Dove's "Evolution" campaign -- has sound

All I can say is "grrr!"

A great day followed by insomnia

I was kind of depressed today but it was a pretty good day nonetheless.

Got up, did some stuff online, and then met my mom. She unloaded the dehumidifier she's giving me (I can't test it until it has been upright for 24 hours, so tomorrow afternoon I'll report on whether it is making my home more liveable).

Then she took me to sushi at Sushi Plaza, a favourite haunt of mine. This place which is just north of Gerrard on Church has a free parking lot (unusual for that area), and at lunch has counter service only, which means no tip to pay for. They also have huge bento boxes which go on special nice and cheap until 4 p.m., and fairly high quality food.

After that we grabbed my bro's dehumidifier from Home Hardware, and she took me shopping at the giant Loblaws at Front and Jarvis. She bought me groceries. I guess she's feeling motherly.

Anyway, at that point I was crashy due to not having gotten the best night of sleep the night before, so she took me home, I put away the groceries, and went to take a nap.

Upon waking I ran out the door to meet yaksman for dinner, and then over to salsa class. I was feeling refreshed but still kinda down. The class cheered me up. At the beginning I was close to wanting to kill the instructor, who is crappy (good thing the class is super cheap). But after it really got going, I didn't care and just enjoyed the dancing.

After that, over to Yaksman's place for some QT, which went particularly well. ;)

Once I got home I applied to a job that had a deadline, did some logistical foo, and tried to go to sleep.

Sadly, as soon as I hit the sheets, I felt like I was WIDE awake. Suddenly I had thoughts based on some recent conversations and past musings about engineering and physics that I couldn't get rid of. I calculated my daily budget in my head, but still couldn't sleep. So I got up and looked up the thoughts I was having, and low and behold, there are real researchers working on this, which is awesome. I don't think it's been covered, so yay, another story idea!

Why am I writing this really long rambling post?

(1) Because I can't sleep and I'm killing time until I get sleepy enough to pass out.
(2) Because I love getting random story ideas like this and I think it's super cool.
(3) Because it's been several weeks since I was this happy/at peace for this long.

The only downer is that I'm going to be tired tomorrow from the difficulty sleeping (I foresee a nap), and that although I'm happy/at peace in comparison to how I've been, I also do have some mounting anxiety about getting my OSAP application in. I'm hoping to start work on that either tomorrow or Friday.

Now I'm going to try to sleep. Please excuse the rambly insomnia-caused post.