Tokyo’s shock rocker extraordinaire has recently been spreading noxious germs memes batons, and kindly asked for my participation in the process.

Unfortunately, I will have to decline, seeing how:

1. I have already posted enough list/sample/endless ranting around the theme of music, digital version thereof included, to fill a few medium-sized encyclopedia. I am sure all the answers to the questionnaire are already there, in one form or another.
2. I like kittens.

However, not one to stay on a grumpy note, I went extra miles to participate in another of her cool ventures and add my contribution to her neat flickr group idea.

Yes, it’s a picture of myself. And I’m naked. So what? other people have done it before. There’s no shame.

What can I say, I was a sexy mutherfucka in my youth… Can you sense that raw sensuality oozing from my bare muscular buttocks?

Digging through hundreds of mostly empty dusty photo-albums for such priceless memories of my wild and exotic youth in the savannah made me realize a few things:

• My mum is a poster child for the kodak years: infinitely more enthusiasm than photographic skills.
• Particularly interesting, was her strong conviction that taking 15 shots of the same scene in quick succession with the exact same settings, was an infallible way to insure at least one non-blurry shot.
• Had digital photography existed 30 years ago, I’d be currently sitting on a multi-million dollar inheritance, merely from the money saved in roll purchases and processing fees.
• When given the chance to snap pictures of her kids: 1) running around with lemurs on gorgeous white sand African beaches, or 2) hidden under 20 layers on clothes, on the yearly Autumn trip to dreary England beaches… which one do you think my mother picked?
• Looking at thankfully rare shots of my highly traumatizing teenage years, only one question comes to mind: How didn’t I get beaten up more often?
  Seeing myself in that vintage Apple t-shirt, coke-bottle glasses and unspeakable mulletoid hairdo, even I feel an irrepressible urge to punch that face.
• On that Disneyland picture where my brother and I are sandwiched between a bunch of furry Star Wars cast, the wooky’s hands are very suspiciously positioned on our waist: have we been repressing memories of that painful time ever since? Need to talk to little brother…
• When you manage to bring four generations and countless members together for a once-a-decade family celebration on a remote island of the Indian ocean, perhaps extra attention could be given to the final group shot. Sure it’s kind of fun to have a picture where every single participant looks in a different direction, but I’m not sure it is the sort of message you wanna give to future generations.
• Mum: I’m sure it never occurred to you that my siblings and I may one day resent your habit of accumulating photographic evidences of us, dressed in matching outfits of various dignity and virility (I’m thinking particularly of these oh-so-cute matching pseudo-vahine costumes, but the damn mini-tux with color-coded bow ties were hardly any better)… If not for the consequences on our fragile psyche at the time, perhaps you could have taken in account the high potential for lawsuits when we’d reach legal age…
• Ironically, the best photographers of the family seem to have been the ones under 5 year of age, whenever they managed to grab hold of the magical clicky-clicky box. Which might explain why we have so many candid shots of the feline and canine population of our successive households. Usually giving their best, “WTF-was-this-light, oh-my-god-I-think-I’m-blind” startled look.