The Awesomeness of People (Up With Them!)

Some things can make me feel like like the world is a bad place filled with bad people doing bad things, or STUPID people doing STUPID things, or some other combination of bad/stupid that makes me feel yucky and sad and maybe NOT like procreating—and perhaps that more than anything else gives you an idea of the DEPTH of the moods I’m talking about: that I would, however briefly, NOT WANT ANOTHER BABY.

Anyway. These are balanced by flashes of GOODNESS and AWESOMENESS that make me love people more. I had that kind of flash while watching a video Paul found: some guy took Google Earth and carefully lined up real photographs with the weird, flat-and-not-flat Google Earth images. I don’t know why I would find this so TOUCHING, and so indicative of the good of humankind, but I did. And so I will post the video here, in case it will give you that feeling too. People can be so GREAT. And so CREATIVE. And so CUTE.

[If you’re here from the future, the video was taken down so it no longer shows here.]

22 thoughts on “The Awesomeness of People (Up With Them!)

  1. Tessie

    Google Earth is SO CRAZY and SO AWESOME, isn’t it? I mean HOW?

    I think you should post more videos because I always like the stuff you post. I still watch that pi thing every now and again.

    Um, I mean you should IN THEORY, if Blogger will allow it in its infinite wisdom.

    Reply
  2. Erin

    That was seriously cool, and definitely gave me the people are awesome feeling. It’s the idea that we’re tied together, strung up in a thread of history & space. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  3. SP

    That was very cool. I think what gave me the warm fuzzy feeling was when the pictures had people in them. It made it all feel so real and personal and special.

    Reply
  4. Alice

    i’m not sure what this says about me, but watching that makes me tired. like all i can think about is how HARD it must have been to do that. haha, how debbie downer am i? and i’m not even in a bad mood! eesh :-)

    Reply
  5. Swistle

    Tessie- It’s all Paul: he’s the one who always finds these awesome things.

    Alice- Ha! Yes. Depending on my mood, I can feel the same way about such things. Like, “OMG the hours and hours and hours—and FOR WHAT?”

    Reply
  6. JMC

    That is COOL!! Kudos to whoever did that. Whenever I come up with a cool idea, I think that it would be awesome, but I just don’t have the time to devote to it, so the ideas die a slow and regretful death.

    Reply
  7. Kristi

    You know what is so cool about that? It makes you realize that those aren’t just places – real people live there, with real lives, and some need real help from the rest of us. We’re all here together on this planet that looks like a marble on GoogleEarth.

    Thanks for posting that.

    Reply
  8. Astarte

    Oh, Google Earth is so fun. I can never find things like this on utube, either – somehow when I go it’s all people crashing into things, porn, or yet another person filming their cat doing nothing in particular. You should post more things like this, so I can selfishly rely on you to provide all my utube entertainment!

    Reply
  9. Kelsey

    I had both the, “That was cool,” and the, “The idea of putting that together makes me tired,” responses. Don’t go by me though, I’m not putting much stock in my response to anything these days!

    Reply
  10. skiplovey

    Where did you find that? It’s so cool. Reason #3billionand1 on why I love the internet.
    The only downer about it is it really makes me want to go on vacation which we won’t be doing this year. Oh well, I’ll live vicariously through the interweb.

    Reply
  11. Jess

    This post makes me feel happy. I love the way you write about how people like that guy make you feel. Because for serious, YOU are so great and creative and cute.

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    This is honeybecke…….oh man, what is it with not being able to leave comments with just my name? Weird-O.

    What a clever video! Google earth is amazing. We recently discovered our house is available at “street view” which is both awesome and scary at the same time! I mean, crikey, you can literally knock on our door and try and sell us some samoas (which, I totally WOULD buy) or offer to wash our carpets. Kinda neat, kinda creepy.

    Ditto on the husband finding all the cool, fun and interesting stuff on the web. I think he gets a lot of it at Reddit.

    PS> In high school I totally thought Up With People was the bomb and I wanted to be in it. We had a girl from Finland stay with us and she smoked. I thought she was so effin’ rad! Hehe. D’oh!

    Reply
  13. HJ

    That music is the good kind. It’s like Explosions in the Sky, which, if I listen to it on my headphones makes me feel like the star of an indie movie. Like just waiting for the bus is a Momentous Event.

    I want more of that music. How do we find out who is making it?

    Reply

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