Feature photo: briannaorg/Lead photo from Trueslant.com

Chatroulette allows live webcam and audio conversations with strangers, but it’s entirely anonymous (if you don’t recognize the person you’re seeing). Click “Connect” to come face-to-face with a stranger from anywhere in the world, and then hit “Next” (or press F9) to move on. You can also mute your audio or turn off your webcam to really become the ultimate creeper.

Of course, you can imagine that an anonymous webcam chatting platform allows all the weirdos to come creeping out of the woodwork. After finding the picture of the cat (shown above) and laughing hysterically about it for days, I decided I needed to track down the feline who had brought so much laughter into my life. Here are my adventures into the scary world of Chatroulette.

Round One

I needed a stiff drink to get started. Actually, I needed several. After applying extra lipgloss and feeling pretty good about myself, I invited my friend Mike to join me. Our first entertainer was a pretty blonde lady wearing nothing but red lacy lingerie. My friend swooned while she rolled around on the bed like a stripper, legs-over-head and views from behind that would make a pornstar blush. Unfortunately for Mike, the red vixen was more interested in me. I resisted, and she hit F9.

We stayed up until 7 a.m talking with people. Several times, I had to remove Mike from the camera’s view because everyone just wanted to see a girl. Our other drunken friend, Steve, eventually wandered into the room dazed and confused after passing out on the toilet for an hour as he usually does. Him and Mike stood in the background with only their torsos visible while I looked on. I’m fairly certain Chatroulette was invented for people like this, young 20-something males who can find various suggestive things to do with their index fingers poking from their jeans’ zippers, in front of strangers.

Round Two

Ok, I figured this time I would try Chatroulette solo and sober. Turns out there is never really an appropriate time to be using the program.

I was so grateful when I found these lively disco dancers blaring techno music in the background. They were a little more interested in dancing than chatting.

Most often, however, I ran into guys who asked me to remove my shirt. The depth of this conversation is overwhelming.

Stranger: hey
You: hey
You: what’s up?
Stranger: nm hbu
You: just trying this chatroulette thing. i’m glad you’re not a penis.
Stranger: lol. any boobs?
You: nope, girls keep rejecting me.
Stranger: cn i c urs
You disconnected.

I later found a guy holding a sign saying: “Show your boobs to a French guy.” His face wasn’t visible, just the sign.

You: Why is your sign in English?
Your partner disconnected.

Nearly all the males I encountered were teenagers. These young lads took a more subtle, sincere approach.

Others carried swords.

Even better, some sported fantastic beards.

Conclusion

The New York Times suggests that 90 per cent of people using Chatroulette are looking for real, genuine connections. There were supposedly 20,000 people logged on while I was online, and within the span of an hour, I had sufficiently received my daily dose of penis imagery. In fact, I probably overdosed.

The only girls I encountered immediately hit “NEXT.” It felt a little insulting at first, like rejection. But then I decided, “Hey, for once in my life I have the power to reject someone!” And then browsed through the masses like a maniacal speed-dater, grinning all the while.

Against all odds, I did encounter two charming, handsome gentlemen who had wandered over here from a CNN article. Both were absolutely shocked to be face-to-face with a woman. They were also downright disturbed.

You: what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen on here?
Stranger: ummmm…i saw a woman, riding her excercise bike that looked like she had hooked up some kinda dildo thing to it that as she peddled, it went up and down
Stranger: no kidding
Stranger: you can’t make that up

Alas, they were much too normal for my entertainment. NEXT!

Community Connection

Because it’s virtually impossible to weed out the pornographic material and other questionable displays, many people predict Chatroulette won’t be around for long. What do you think? Want to know more? Read about the future of Chatroulette.

If you want to read more about social media’s evolution, visit our Social Media Focus Page.

Photos by author

When I got home from work today, my husband Justin told me he would be away all the following week at a training course in New Mexico. That means next week I will be home alone. Again.

Justin is in the Navy, so he goes on a lot of this sort of business trip. He was away for almost 8 months in 2009. This year, while he probably won’t deploy, I’m sure I’ll find myself on my own a lot and stuck in the house by myself.

Before I met him, I could never have imagined that I would want to stay in one place for any amount of time. Justin and I both felt the same way. Our first few dates, we tacitly impressed each other by talking about all the wild things we wanted to do one day, and our shared wanderlust made it easy for us to pack his car two summers ago and move out West.

We lived in San Diego for almost a year before he deployed, and all of a sudden, I found myself located an entire country away from family and friends and an entire world away from the man I loved.

Until then, I thought not having a home was more important than having one, but when I found myself fending for myself, forging a life without my partner, suddenly developing a solid home base became a priority. I manned the fort and turned the apartment – one that had only been ours a short time — into a home.

In my spare time, –and I had a lot of it — I began to create the perfect space for us. I placed Justin’s Bahraini rug, the one a friend brought back for him a few years ago, in the living room. It takes up half the room, but it’s neat. I like it. I collected candles and tried really hard not to let his cactus die. I moved furniture around. I bought decorative knobs for our dresser, and when the Anthropologie catalog arrives in the mail, I flip directly to the home décor section.

What exactly was I doing here? And who was this person I had become? I thought we were a couple who lived for adventure and defined ourselves by the desire to be free, not to be tied down. The summer Justin was deployed, though, that old definition of myself no longer mattered. Being with Justin is being at home. I couldn’t be with Justin, but turning our shared home into a place that reminded me of him and gave me the stability I was missing.

Many in my situation moved back home, but that wasn’t for me. It was a good experience to spend seven months in a totally new environment. I learned to be independent. Justin and I improved our communication skills while juggling time zones and work schedules which in turn strengthened our relationship.

When he leaves the Navy, things will return to normal. There won’t be jobs or mortgages holding us back. No threat of court martial looms should we choose to pick up and move wherever, whenever.

That future time in my life feels so open, and we spend many lovely hours talking about the possibilities.

“Should we do the Peace Corps?”

“Yes! Should I go to grad school in Manhattan?”

“Of course! Should I try to calculate how long we could live on our savings in an apartment in Mexico City or Paris?”

“Sure, I’ll help. Have you thought about the Appalachian Trail?”

The future holds everything and anything, but right now that’s not what I want.

Right now, I love every day that I come home from work, and he is waiting for me on the couch, legs propped on our coffee table, thumbing through the pages of another book on his reading list. I relish my to-do lists of household chores or schedules or anything that smacks of normalcy. I want to sleep in on Saturdays and play trivia at the bar down the street on Tuesdays. Right now, world travel can wait, because I like being home.

But when I know we’ll no longer be separated for months at a time, when we do take off and go, I’ll have no trouble leaving the candles and catalogues behind.

Above photo by author. Feature photo byTorley

My five-year-old daughter Lila spends a decent amount of her time on YouTube. She loves hopping from video to video, and I always get a kick out of her favorites. The overweening appeal of cats — and the effect they can have on a blog or website — dawned on me this weekend when she found The Mean Kitty Song.

Over thirty one millions hits. Yes, you read that right. Thirty. One. Million. Hits.

It’s a cute video, and even taking into account the number of small children who, like Lila, will view this thing 30 times a day if left to their own devices, that’s still a lot of people watching a cute little tabby cat in action.

The adorable spiky haired guy singing? I can’t help wondering how many times he got laid because this video.

But it doesn’t stop there….

This video of a cat freaking out also holds its own as far as Youtube views with well over 9 million views.

Why is this poor thing acting this way? According to the video notes, she’s never been abused, she just doesn’t like men.

And finally, this next video of an orange feline clocks in at over 2 million views.

I suppose I’d also be somewhat miffed if someone named me Burger and Fries.

The Magical Allure of Kitty Cat Cuteness

Beyond Youtube, you’ll find a proliferation of funny and popular cat websites like Lolcats.com which features the ever famous cat in a fruit helmet photo. There’s also sparklecat.com apparently written by cats for cats. It even has a Cat-To-Cat advice column offering tips on everything from how to keep your human from dressing you up in costumes to methods of coping when your person comes home smelling of other cats.

Even the most hardened human cannot resist a pissed off cat dressed as a taco, two cats talking or yet another cat in citrus head gear, this time with wayfarer animation.

How do we harness the all powerful attraction of cats for our own websites and projects? I’ll let you know when I figure it out. In the meantime, hang in there!

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Just can’t get enough? Take a look at photos of Matador member’s pets or learn more about taking your pet along when traveling.

Photo by Zawezome

Relate Magazine is developing an e-Book series and wants to include your stories, thoughts, advice and ideas. The first issue focuses on body image and self esteem.

They’re particularly interested in articles dealing with

For more information, check out the Relate e-Book Call For Submissions Guidelines.

Email submissions to mary@relatemag.com with the story attached in the body or attach it as a Word document. You can also choose to remain anonymous.

Deadline is February 26, 2010.

Happy writing!

Community Connection

Need inspiration? Try some travel related reading.

Cards of Change is what would happen if Post Secret and Operation Beautiful had a three-way with Linked In. This website allows you to upload your new and improved business card in order to connect with others who have been laid off as well as potential employers.

Our mission is to collect as many business cards and stories of positive change of people who have recently been laid off and connect them with new opportunities from potential employers, business partners and people who make the effort to look on the bright side of life

The current beta form of the website includes a place to upload your revamped card to a searchable database which can be parsed by location. Unfortunately, it seems this search function isn’t entirely in working order yet. All searches I tried yielded no results. Hopefully, this will be functional soon.

In the meantime, I suggest checking out the Top 100 Cards list.

There you’ll find a former Chiat Day employee who now volunteers reading to children. Or Tiffanni who is making the time to doodle. And over and over, the message resonates from people who are living more freely, richly, openly and lovingly even though they’re not making as much money as they did before losing their jobs.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Photo by John Gorrindo

At nightfall, my friend and I climb into a motorboat with a group of Sicilians we’ve just met. We have been traveling the coast of Italy for nearly a month and now, having reached the Aeolian Islands, we are heading to Volcano, a volcanic island made entirely of black sand.

“Look,” one of the Sicilians says as we start away from shore, spreading out his arms towards the pebble beach. “Don’t we have the most beautiful beaches you’ve ever seen?”

“I’ve seen better,” I shrug. I am twenty years old.

It’s been just about three years since I left the San Francisco area, and I have spent those years trying to move as far away from home as possible. So why, as I ride out into the night, do I close my eyes to the shore before me, and return to the one I left behind?

“This all could have been lost to condos,” my father says, his voice hoarse. He takes out his Swiss Army knife and cuts a chunk off a block of cheddar, hands it to me. The harsh Point Reyes autumn wind whips sand around us. We’ve just walked four miles along the stark coast to this estuary at beach’s end. My feet are tired, hair knotted with salt and wind. My dad talks – once again – about the US congressman who fought plans to develop the area in the 1960s.

What is this that has been saved? Just north of San Francisco on the western tip of the affluent Marin County sits this rare, protected world, a peninsula of steep cliffs, wildflower dotted meadows, and narrow coves swallowed by an unyielding riptide. This is where I spent the weekends of my childhood.

As I bite into the slice of cheese, what we came for begins: Sea lions coming to feed. They first peak up their heads, then their bodies out of the water. Soon, there are dozens, then hundreds of them barking and flopping, caking their wet bodies with sand.

I am as insignificant to the sea lions as the tiny boats on the edge of the ocean. On a peninsula that has been traveling north for millions of years, my life is no more notable than the sand crabs burrowing around our feet.

I am thirteen years old. It’s been two months since my parents split up, and this is the first time in those two months that the dragging in my chest has ceased.

My father hands me a slice of heavily salted tomato.

“Pretty damn good,” he says, smiling. I stuff it into my mouth.

I nod, the juice running down my chin. One of the sea lions barks before it slips back into the water. It is the best tomato I have ever tasted, and the sea lions, slipping back into the still estuary, are the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.

At sixteen, I bring my first love here where we spend the afternoon wrapped in a Mexican blanket. My father and I returned regularly, the stretches of time between are visits growing longer as I grew older and finally he moved away.

I have often wondered why certain places set anchor in us. Is it the power of family and first love that keeps Point Reyes so alive for me.

Photo by Alan Vernon

Or is it the unusual beauty of Point Reyes that shaped these moments, setting them down into my memory for good? Or?

“Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels he belongs,” says Somerset Maugham

I thought I’d find that place on the other side of the world, but it has taken much traveling, many beaches, more introductions and partings to realize this. All I want to do now is sit on that dune and eat a chunk of cheddar while I watch the sea lions crawl onto the estuary, their barks filling the air.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Feature photo: Dr JimiGlide/Photo above: JP Puerta

“Why?” you may ask. Because he was worried “the black people” would come. Of course, the fact he lives in an extremely white and rather isolated part of Long Island didn’t seem to ease his fears. In order for those black people to come, they would need to hop in their cars – train wasn’t an option, remember, because of the blackout – and drive all the way over to Long Island in the pitch dark just to steal his stuff.

Really, what are the chances?

The reality of that night?

I’ve never seen people so decent to each other. The neighborhood kids, usually quite hooliganish, carried flashlights to help people to their homes. Grocery stores and bodegas gave away free food, because it would go bad left unrefrigerated anyway. Never before and never again in ten years did I see Cobble Hill as such a community.

Fear jails you. We sat on our stoops chatting. He sat there wide eyed and fearful for one long wakeful night.

Almost seven years later, my family and I still laugh at this guy. We’ve even adopted a phrase — the title of this article — in his honor. It refers to any time someone assumes the worst about another person because of prejudice. It means shortsighted, irrational fear of something unknown.

The Other Side of Irrational

Then there’s Emma. She’s a housekeeper in NYC. I met her in the laundry room of our building where we’d exchange pleasant smiles and hello. We couldn’t speak because she doesn’t know English, and at the time, I didn’t speak Spanish.

Skip forward five years. Emma started babysitting for Lila, and I learned a little more about her.

Emma is Bolivian.
She used to be a nun.
She worked in an orphanage.
She left because as a nun she wasn’t able to adopt the children.
She adopted two.

Emma is one of the most wonderful, honest decent people I have met in my life. She works hard, and nothing is too difficult, too complicated or too much for her. I trust her with my daughter, which is the highest praise I can give anyone.

When I think of what a Bolivian is like, I think of Emma.

-Photo by antisocialtory

Of course, living here in Argentina on the edge of Bolivia, people have a slightly different story.

When I visit public offices here in Argentina – immigration for renewing our visa or registro civil for residency here – I’m treated differently than many of the people waiting — almost all Bolivians — in the office. We are warned to watch out because, you know, all those stories of Bolivians kidnapping young children at the mall for ransom. We’re told we need shots for Hepatitis A and other diseases because, well, they come from Bolivia. Bolivians don’t work hard. They steal.

Sitting on the front porch making saints.

The reality is my view of Bolivians is as much a stereotype as the other. It may be easier to stomach, because I ascribe positive attributes, but it is still a stereotype based on one wonderful woman. I doubt there are many like her in the world, let alone an entire country of Emmas. It’s the flip side of sitting on your porch. I call it saint making. Same thing as a bad movie where out of nowhere, the wise man or woman – usually Native American, Voodoo priestess, African shaman – appears with inchoate words of advice that lead the main character from darkness to light.

Both blind us badly.

Two recent articles on Matador raise similar issues.

The first, Fear Among Men:Notes On Traveling With A Girlfriend, frustrated and angered people in its portrayal of women as helpless travelers in need of care. On the other side, many found a main character, called The Israeli, objectionable.

A second article, Barakku: Black Culture in Japan, explores one man’s questions about race, culture and whether or not he’s comfortable being accepted by virtue of the color of his skin.

What can we understand about our own prejudice?

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Is it our duty to eradicate stereotypes, see the world more evenhandedly or can prejudice sometimes serve a useful purpose?

Photo: Ctd 2005

You’re probably skeptical. How could a household product improve our planet? Will it be used as a way to revolutionize Apple products like the iPad, making it waterproof and protected from the outside elements?

The spray hasn’t been released to the public yet, but is currently undergoing some trials. Here’s the low-down.

How It’s Used

-Food processing companies will use the glass for sterilization. The results so far are impressive: surfaces needing to be sterilized with strong bleach require only a hot water rinse once they are coated with the glass. The perfect solution for germaphobes, these surfaces remained sterile for months.

-Hotel chains and train companies are testing the product for cleaning purposes.

-It can be used for kitchens, bathrooms, floors, and just about any other surface.

-The spray can be used on headstones and cemetery monuments to offset weathering and graffiti.

- Because it’s so thin and flexible, you can even spray your clothes with it. Red wine spill? Not a problem. The glass is waterproof, so simply peel and remove.

-Spraying plants and seeds helps to prevent fungal diseases and pest infestation, due to its breathable but protective quality.

-Some research has even proven that the spray helps seeds to germinate and grow quicker, much to the delight of vineyard operators.

Photo: Jill Clardy

What This Means For the Future

Because of its multi-purpose functionality, the spray-on glass will remove virtually any need for household cleaners.

One coat will last a year, thus making it affordable and less wasteful. That means you get to throw out harmful chemicals, ditch the sickly-smelling cleaners and stop spending a ton of cash. Mr. Clean is probably rolling over in his grave right now.

Of course, this seemingly futuristic product raises all kinds of questions. What can’t it coat? Why would you want to cover your clothes in a thin layer of glass? Is this like a more glamorous type of plastic chair covering cleverly disguising someone’s severe aversion to germs?

There’s also no mention of any negative side-effects to be found. What about the long-term consequences? What happens when major cleaning supply companies are forced to close their businesses?

Community Connection

How do you predict nanotechnology to change our future?