Peronsal Goal

Today I have no real post for you, but I do have a goal...and that is just something you'll have to find out...tomorrow! ;)

Yippee!

Pervert of the month

And the prize goes to: Isabella Rossellini.

Let me begin this with a story. I love learning things...it's sick. So it is not surprising when I decide to read up on something completely random. The other day, I decided that I'd learn about how spiders mate...I typed in Google and I got this: Green Porno. I was piqued. So I clicked it.

Okay, so I'm a little late to the Green Porno party. But what I lack in punctuality I more than make up for in enthusiasm for these warped short films. Isabella “Put Your Disease in Me” Rossellini outdoes herself (and actually does herself) in this eight-part series about the sex lives of various insects, arachnids and mollusks. Produced by Sundance expressly for smaller digital screens (computers, cell phones, etc) the whole series is just dirty, filthy, good clean fun. Try to imagine a Children’s Television Workshop-produced interpretation of that transcendently horrible "pterodactyl pr0n" and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark. But not really.

But seriously, enjoy....I know that I think this is the awesomeness of idility.

Cinco De Mayo

Good morning to you all. So as I stated in my last post...a lot of you don't know exactly what Cinco De Mayo is. So I'm going to give you a brief update of this.

It is often thought that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day...it's not. Mexico's Independence Day is actually September 16. This holiday is actually called the Baker's war to some people. Though I don't know the exact correlation between bakeries and war, it's a nicer way of stating that the Mexicans declared war and won against foreign french forces.

At the time of Mexican independence from Spain, the country was put in a constant turmoil since everyone was fighting about who would rule. At this point, the french (who had a presence already there...in bakeries I assume?) decided this was an opportune time. They invaded and declared war on the Mexican government and marched onto Mexico city.

The french ended up occupying the city and placed Maximilian I, as Emperor of Mexico on the throne of Mexico. Eventually the french were defeated and expelled in 1867. Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Mexican army's victory over the French at Puebla ( a region in Mexico) though this has nothing to do with the final expulsion of the french.

Movie dream

There’s a new movie coming out with Eiko Ishioka's Costume design in it! I can't tell you how much I love Eiko Ishioka's designs...they are always unique and I find them immensely inspiring. The film is directed by Tarsem, who previously collaborated with Ishioka on the movie The Cell.

Events take place in a 1915 hospital, where a bedridden patient befriends a little girl with a broken arm and offers to tell her an adventure story about five men - an Indian adventurer, an African ex-slave, a masked bandit, an Italian bombmaker, and Charles Darwin (what? yes!). The girl is enthralled by the exotic tale, and waits eagerly for every new chapter. But the storyteller, a broken man emotionally and physically, has a dark motive for telling the tale: he wants her to steal something at the hospital in exchange for the story’s conclusion. Here is the trailer:



I did a quick Google search on when the film is coming out: nothing. I did a search for it on IMDB, and learned that it was completed in 2006. Hmm. That’s when I started digging into the YouTube comments. One guy writes that he saw it at a private screening in LA a week ago, and that they asked the audience to critique for the purpose of determining whether it will go on the big screen or on DVD. Another person writes that they have not yet found a distributor. And then there is this comment by Khan Higou:

"I spent a year working on post-production of this movie (in Paris);
I know every single image of this feature and believe me, it IS beautiful for
sure. And you Americans are not lucky about this independent movie
(self-produced, directed, even self-distributed, no big studio logo in front of
this trailer, did you notice…) ’cause I heard it has been rated R in the US; a
way to punish Tarsem everybody thinks here ’cause the movie is not that
violent"

Further research turned up one review that indicates that the film has not been sold for distribution due to scathing reviews at the Toronto Film Fetival. The reviewer writes that Zoe Bell (Death Proof) was the president of the jury that year. “(She was) seated two seats away from me quite enjoyed at least from what I could get from her reactions to the film while it was being shown.” Maybe she didn’t like it so much after all.

Maybe the ending is a little predictable, I admit the cell in terms of plot was pretty crappy...it was a bad movie...but seriously but the visuals look stunning! I want to see this - and I want to love it.

But my heart belongs to daddy!

Today is a very special day. Not only because it's Earth Day (have you done something green today?), but also because it's my father's birthday! Happy Birthday Dad! I wish you the best in everything that you do, and today should be an amazing day! Love you

Living between Wednesdays

I stole this title from another blog that I've been reading (it's called Living between wednesdays.blogspot.com) and I have to admit that it's quite appropriate. Wednesdays, more commonly known as hump days, are in-between-days. You're not quite at the end of the week, and you're not quite at the beginning either. For me it can be one of the most challenging days. Anyway, today I came into the office and Lo! I find material that I just had to share...for all you others pushing through the hump.

Ok, I know. Everyone and their granny has already blogged about this, but I just gotta chime in to quickly say that Garfield Minus Garfield is the most unexpected riot. Some old sage dude said something along the lines of "the greatest truths are the simplest, so likewise are the greatest men" and that tenet definitely applies here:

"Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the

Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about

schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern

life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a

journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as

he fights a losing battle against loneliness and methamphetamine

addiction in a quiet American suburb"

It's a shame that any attempt to make a Garfield Minus Garfield day-to-day calender would be cockblocked by copyright litigation. Hey I generally loathe day calendars. But seriously, I'd consider having an excuse to purchase and read the paper version of Garfield Minus Garfield every gosh darn day.

Dating Mr. Big

As I mentioned in my last post, I dated a guy who had lots of money. I'm talking about...lots. Now none of it was his money, it was all his family's...and even that I'm betting actually came from some scandal in his home country (I won't get into the politics of where his money came from). But my love affair with, I'll call him Andre, began one night when I answered the phone and a very bold, pleasing voice stuttered an awkward hello. I was flattered. I had met him at a small party held by another well-to-do friend of mine and I never thought I would receive a personal call from him. He was very smooth, and had a million and one women all over him at the party. So naturally I was shocked when he called me.

A whirlwind first date followed, and then a heady courtship that lasted on and off for a few months, until I found myself in a painful triangle with the woman who was to become his fiance. He's still out there I assume, splashing money about, if he hasn't been arrested for something. As for me, I've moved out on my own where I am working like a regular girl, in a regular life, in a regular city. While I've put Andre far behind me. I've never forgotten the lessons I learned from dating a big shot:

1. If a man asks you to meet him in New York for your first date, run- but not to New York.

Who doesn't love a bold romantic gesture? Just don't ignore the red flags: Andre did indeed pay for me to go to New York for our first date, later he bought me jewelry, and paid for a million and one things. Perhaps all of that blinded me to the difference between us, and the fact that he had recently broken up with his first fiance and was in no way ready for a relationship.

2. Greed is not good for a relationship.
I remember Andre saying things like "Thousands is not enough, I want to have more when I am on my own". Once he said he'd have to sell part of his "empire". OK, Obi-Wan. Too much success can give a guy confidence- which normally isn't bad, but so much so that they start dating multiple people because they think they deserve it. And that's exactly what Andre did.

3. If it seems like he has something to hide, trust your gut, he has something to hide. Andre was always very shady. He constantly was asking who strangers were and didn't like it when I helped other people because that made him nervous...and not in the good protective way but because he would then think I had something against him. Later on, experience proved that he was a pretty shifty guy that I really shouldn't have been involved in.

4. When friends don't have anything nice to say about your boyfriend, listen.

People, that weren't apart of Andre's "crowd", found him arrogant, cruel and cold. Even though they were my friends, and yes they weren't the top cream layer of DC, Andre would treat them with disdain. They were worth more than he was, and it showed he really had no respect for people.

5. You really can learn from every experience.

Andre encouraged me to improve myself, without changing exactly who I was; to never forget the lessons that my family had taught me, and I thank him for those things. I now know how to distinguish people that actually care for me and people that are just using me for something. He also made me realize that if you do something wrong it's important to own up to it early on, and I have learned the value of being loyal, not only to yourself, but to your friends and the people you care about.

Woody Allen was on an American Apparel Billboard?

The big news today is that Woody Allen is suing American Apparel for misappropriation of his image. Apparently, woody was never contacted about billboards that depicted him dressed as a rabbi, which apparently endorsed American Apparel clothing....somehow... and so now he feels he's owed $10 million for the use of his face.

Guess you can just throw this one on top of the pile of lawsuits already against AA, specifically Dov Charney. What's interesting, is that I had no idea these billboards even existed, and neither did anyone else I asked this morning. And what's even more interesting is that these billboards were used to promote a Christmas day flyer for steep discounts for shopping only on Christmas of last year. Who shops on Christmas day? Rabbis of course!

btw it says, in Yiddish, holy rabbi in the corner. Want to read more?

Palace of Depression

"The only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.” -George Daynor

The exploits of George Daynor read like the synopsis of a Coen Brothers flick. As the story goes, Daynor was a former gold prospector who’d lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hitchhiking through Alaska, he was visited by an angel who told him to make his way to New Jersey without further delay. Divine providence had dictated that Gaynor was to wait out the Great Depression there, building a castle with his bare hands

Daynor had only four dollars in his pocket when he arrived in Vineland, NJ. He used the money to buy three swampy acres of land that had once been a car junkyard. For years he slept in an abandoned car on the mosquito-infested property, living off a steady diet of frogs, fish and squirrels while he built his elaborate eighteen-spired, pastel-hued Palace of Depression out of auto parts and mud. His primary objective? To encourage his downtrodden countrymen to hold onto their hope and stay resourceful, no matter what. Daynor opened his homemade castle to the public on Christmas Day, 1932, free of charge (he started charging an entrance fee after someone made fun of his beard), and proved an enthusiastic, albeit eccentric tour guide.

Daynor held back his wild red hair with bobby pins, wore lipstick and rouge, and enjoyed dressing alternately as a prospector or a Victorian dandy. Legend has it he kept his common-law wife, Florence Daynor, locked up in one of the Palace’s subterranean chambers during visiting hours. He offered his “living brain” to the Smithsonian for experiments (they declined). His Palace of Depression, a.k.a The Strangest House In the World, quickly became a popular tourist destination for folks on their way to Atlantic City.

From Weird NJ:
"The Palace was a hodge podge of materials, including old car chassis for floor beams, and gables fashioned from old car fenders. Concrete walls were constructed from odd pieces of cement and rocks, and bed frames were made into swinging doors. To paint the house, Daynor pulverized old red bricks and mixed them with crankcase motor oil. The dome on top of the house was an large kettle turned upside down. Old wagon wheels formed the bases for cone shaped towers and revolving doors. The dining table was made of a huge cypress log with knee holes cut into it, and stumps were used as seats.

There were many darkened rooms and corners where Mr. Daynor would delight in regaling visitors with tales of hidden rivers and his vision of happiness and security. He would show people the “Wishing Well” and “Knockout Room,” where a heavy boulder was suspended above a chair. If you wanted to forget about your troubles, you could sit on the chair under the boulder and get a bonk on the head. Reportedly no one ever took him up on this offer.

Daynor even constructed an underground “Jersey Devil’s Den,” which one could crawl through. The castle itself had no windows, but shards of glass that created a colorful sunrise and sunset mosaic. The property was neatly laid out with ponds and gardens that Daynor would guide tourists around, all for 25¢ a head."

Although Daynor made grandiose claims that his creation would last 100 years, the castle has fallen into disrepair by the late 40s, and its aging king was getting weirder by the minute. In the 50s, the 81 year old Daynor claimed that kidnappers had contacted him and asked to hide a child in one of the spires of his Palace. It was a tasteless publicity scheme and Daynor was thrown in jail for a year for fraud. During his incarceration, vandals tore the Palace apart and burned a lot of it down. Daynor’s health deteriorated in prison and he never fully recovered after his release, suffering from chronic malnutrition. He died in 1964. It was his wish to be buried at the Palace, but the city had plans to raze it to make way for a public park, so Daynor was buried at a nearby cemetery in a pauper’s grave instead.

Although few remnants of the once grand castle are still standing, The Palace of Depression Restoration Association is currently trying to bring the castle back to its former glory. Volunteers are invited to help recreate Daynor's castle as an arts and learning center, and folks with the time and skills to pursue grants and donations are also encouraged to join in the effort. Best of luck to you guys!

The Palace of Depression: Then and Now
Weird NJ article
Roadside America article

What to say (and not say) in a date

So I’ve been getting a lot of people asking me what to say and what not to say to someone that they’re interested in. I’ll be honest; it’s very difficult to tell you absolute truths with this because every single person is different. However, I was sent a suggestion from one of you asking me if this article was correct. It’s an article from the MSN homepage that says “What not to say or do in the presence of a woman”. I’ll give you my thoughts on it.

1. Don’t reveal how much your car cost. This is true for me. I may not be a mechanic, but I can tell when a car cost a lot a when a car doesn’t. If you have a nice car, you have a nice car. There’s no reason to boast about it, because frankly I don’t care. It makes you seem like you’re trying so hard to impress me with money…you may very well be, but simply showing me your expensive car is enough…and you get points for not being arrogant about it. Also, why draw attention to your car? We’re on a date with you, not with your car.

2. Don’t clean your gun. This is a half truth. On the first date, yeah it may not be such a good idea. You come off as a little bit psycho. But…if you do own a gun, be sure you tell the girl on the first date. How would you like to be really into a girl, and then she suddenly shouts “ha ha I’m a man!”. It’s not necessarily the same thing here, but what if she doesn’t like guns…she would get the same reaction. If she doesn’t mind, perhaps you could show her how to clean it on another date. Base line, just don’t do it on your first date.

3. Polish high school trophies (which you still have displayed). True.

4. Refer to your mother as your best friend. True.

5. Rap. Unless you’re at karaoke, or trying to make us laugh, true.

6. Check out our assistant/roommate/the baby-sitter. Do it without us noticing (if you must), because nothing is more annoying than trying to impress someone, when they’re too busy checking someone else out.

7. Question our footwear. True. If we are regretting our decision, don’t rub our face in it.

8. Blow-dry your hair. Meh, it’s not so bad…so long as you don’t take longer than we do.

9. Tip less than 20 percent. Most of us, at some point, have been a waitress and know what it’s like. Show some class, and be nice...unless the service was really really bad.

10. Celebrity impressions. They can be kinda grating.

11. Impressions of us. True.

12. Forget to carry cash. True.

13. Flip it, flop it, swing it around, tug on it, adjust it, scratch it, or do anything that will give us the impression that it’s just an appendage and not a mystical source of pleasure and satisfaction. True.

14. Wii. Not true. I’ve had plenty of times where this was a lot of fun. But not recommended for the frist date, and if you do show her your wii…let it be something she can do too.

15. Scream—at the dog, at the guy who just stole your parking spot, at Bill Belichick. True, no matter how much that person/thing deserves it, when we hear you raise your voice, we have an idea of what we're in for.

16. Talk about former exploits. Ever. Some girls find this true. I personally don’t care. You wouldn’t be on a date with me if you didn’t like me a little bit. So long as you don’t go into so many details. The time you’re entering the danger zone is if you start comparing me and them. Example: No- I used to date a girl that liked me to pull her hair. Yes- I used to date someone that was a vegetarian. No- My last girlfriend didn’t eat fish like you do.

17. Use the words bitch, slut, tramp, or whore. True, unless referring to another man.

18. Tell us you're going to kiss us. Not true. Women like mystery and the whole, dark and handsome stranger thing. Be a man and go for it. But if she pulls away, back off immediately and apologize. Also, remember, a kiss is a kiss…tonsil hockey is tonsil hockey…learn the difference.

You've been sleeping around

On the topic of travel! I want to go to these as well! Enjoy a sort of mini carousel.I’ve spent the night in some mighty sketchy beds. Who are you to judge? Or deny, for that matter. In fact, I’m happy to up your ante with even stranger places to lay your head.

You won’t mind being a pod person at Whitepod, a tented Alpine ecoresort where you can ski or hike or just be. The single- or double-occupancy tents feature wood-burning stoves and organic bedding. This is Switzerland, after all.

Bond with nature in a deep way at Kokopelli’s Cave Bed & Breakfast, a one-bedroom cave carved 70 feet underground in 65 million year old stone. Why would you do this? Those views of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners sure are nice.

If you’d rather go up than down, climb 50 feet to your very own Mount Rainier tree house. How else do you expect to have morning coffee with the eagles?

It’s a mad, floating beach house when you invite a dozen pallies to bunker down on Lake Mead or Lake Powell with Forever Houseboats. (As far as I’m concerned, “pleasure Cove Marina” says it all...yaaaarrrr!)

Lone Ranger with your Tonto in an Alberta tipi. You get 350 square feet of solar-heated water and electricity. But what are you doing inside with those amazing plains right outside?

You got the band back together, uploaded tracks to Facebook, and sweat through a new tat. You’re ready to hit the road in a luxury tour bus that sleeps up to twelve. That’s plenty o’ room for the groupies.

What do you guys think?

Vacation dreams

I was sitting down yesterday on the metro thinking about all the things that I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted to do, when I saw a sign that read "where do you see yourself in 3 years?" It was an ad for an online school, but seriously it couldn't have been more appropriate. Life, the universe...whatever...was giving me a sign. So I started to thinking; where do I see myself in 3 years?

To be honest I don't know. I have a vague conception of what I want, but no real goal, or details. For example, a lot of my friends want to be married in three years, or starting a family. Granted a lot of my friends are older than I am, but not by much. I, personally, don't have that particular drive. I'm not ring hungry- nor am I baby hungry. I believe that I can wait for a while. This doesn't say I may not eventually have those things, but they are not in the forefront of my brain. So having established that I have life goals, but nothing specific I started narrowing down my thinking to something more tangible (and far less stressful)...where would I like to have vacationed in 3 years? Now that was something I could work with, and they are as follows.

I have many life-long travel goals and one of them is to travel the silk trail. I am fascinated by ancient trade routes, which is hardly surprising because I am enthralled by people and civilizations. While other little girls were wanting to be princesses (of the Disney version), I wanted to be a vampire princess of ancient Egypt. Strange? Perhaps. But I digress, I want to travel all the major trade routes, and one of the most infamous, is the silk trail. The silk trail is (also known as the Silk Road) is a series of trade and cultural routes connecting the Asian, European and African continents. Thousands of people across various periods of time have traveled through these routes ranging from religious pilgrims and monks, to soldiers, nomads, empires, and the very first hominids transgressing out of Africa to the rest of the world.

The trade routes extend over 5,000 miles on land and sea. It was a significant factor in the development of the great civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Indian subcontinent, and Rome, and has helped lay the foundations for the modern world (then again what hasn’t these days?). There are two main routes in the trail: the northern route and the southern route.

The northern route goes through the Chinese province of Gansu, and then splits into three routes. One passes north through the Taklimakan Desert (in Kyrgyzstan and Xingjian), to rejoin in Kashgar. The other, going north as well, shifts towards the Tien Shan Mountains, through Turfan, Talgar and Almaty (in Kazakhstan). All the routes join up in Kokand in the Fergana Valley, and across the Karakum Desert towards Merv, before joining the southern route for a short while. The northern route follows for a portion the Amu Darya River, and from here there are small tributaries to the silk trail that go through the Aral Sea, into the Crimean peninsula, around the Black Sea, through the Balkans and into Venice and Constantinople.

The southern route is mainly a single route running through northern India, into Mesopotamia and Anatolia. It runs south through the Sichuan Basin in China and crosses the high mountains into the northeastern part of India, following the ancient tea route. It then travels west along the Brahmaputra and Ganges river plains before passing through Pakistan and the Hindu Kush Mountains before joining the northern route (briefly) near Merv. It then follows a nearly straight line west through mountainous northern Iran and the northern tip of the Syrian Desert to the Levant. From here, Mediterranean trading ships plied regular routes to Italy, and North Africa.

Now if you were to follow the third trail, it’s only via sea, which passes through the Red River near modern Hanoi and into the Malacca Straits to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and India before heading onto the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. From the ports in Egypt there were other branches that led down the east African coast as far down as the delta of the Rufiji River in modern Tanzania.

It’s amazing how there is so much evidence of the silk trail being used before actual history records it. People in the Sahara imported domesticated (nonnative) animals from Asia between 6000 BC and 4000BC. Foreign artifacts dating to the 5th millennium BC in the Badarian culture of Egypt indicate contact with distant Syria. The gemstone Lapis Lazuli was being traded from its only known source in the ancient work-Badakshan (right now in northeastern Afghanistan) as far as Egypt, as well as Chinese jade and steatite plaque in Egypt.

A Major step in the opening the Silk Road between the East and West came with the expansion of Alexander the Great’s empire into Central Asia. It was then followed by the various roman and Persian empires, becoming most famous in the Mongol empire stage with explorers like Marco Polo. I don’t’ want to bore you with everything, but now you can see why I find it so fascinating, and why I want to go through this area. To be able to follow an ancient trail, in a completely different time era. It’s amazing.

Inspiration

I'm going through a creative standstill. Sometimes, I get this anxious feeling that I'm not creating enough, that I'm not doing anything to satisfy that side of me which demands for an outlet. Normally when I get these urges I close myself out of the world, and live in a hermitine state creating things. Unfortunately I can't do that anymore. Bills must be paid, and in order to pay for them I have to go to work, and at work I am both retracting away from that creative self, and coming face to face with people that don't really connect with that feeling. Anyway, this is not to say I don't think that people in my office are "below" my artistic values...they each are creative in their own way. But I am extraordinarily restless, and the right side of my brain is supplicating for release.

So, I try to do little things to quiet it down. I go online and look up random artists and topics; searching for inspiration. It was then that I came across an entire MySpace page devoted to the "bob" haircut. It's a french myspace that catalogues 1,428 images devoted to the bob hairstyle and its derivatives.

Looking through the images was like shaking a greyscale snowglobe of eyes, lips and hair angels into constant new configurations...a delightful experience that let me feeling awed and inspired. I wondered if I should be feeling a twing of guilt for ravenously going through what can be classified as "stolen images" - gathered from the web, scanned from magazines and even manipulated without credit. And then it hit me: I don't care.

Of course knowing the artists names would've been nice, but it may have been impossible to compile that information. I enjoyed the site anyway. Was that wrong? I guess it depends on where you think the line of theft gets crossed. Of all places, I've observed that the most embarrassing attitudes towards image theft come from within the alt photo/modeling scene. Every day on every networking site, people swap copyrighted photos for inspiration. It's become part of our culture. In reaction, I've seen many alt photographers and models sick their DMCA-fan army like a pack of attack dogs on any DeviantArt artist or naive foreign-language gothchick photo-swapping blog that gets "reported", and it has always left me feeling more sorry for the target than for the artist who's been "ripped off". I bet that at least at one point in their life, every artist has stumbled across an uncredited image they didn't pay for that affected their aesthetic sensibility. Well, it's time to give that to someone else; today's world just makes this process more transparent, and faced with this new visibility into the life cycle of their work, image owners freak out.

Obviously, it's wrong to steal a photo and proclaim yourself the subject or the photographer; still, I feel that humiliating these people (most of whom are just insecure 13 year olds) publicly should be beneath the image owner, and that a private email or website customer service alert should suffice. However, swiping images or complete art direction, as a means to financial gain is the least forgivable thing of all, and that's when I support the heavy-handed tactics.

Anyway, back to the bobsite. It's amazing; Enjoy! And if you're a photographer who ended up there, be happy. It's the residual effect of producing an iconic image. That fact alone -that it ends up in a place like this where people can find it and get inspired in turn -is something to be proud of.

Workout video

As many of you know, I have a weird fascination and an irrational fear of the undead. I had a few extra moments to do a quick search on zombies, to find out when the movie "World War Z" would be coming out (I will tell you what WWZ is in another post. For now it is an awesome book). One of the hits that I had was Linnea Quigley workout. I was curious to see what the scream queen of the 80's had to do with zombies and a workout. So I clicked on the link.





Ladies and gentlemen...I have now been traumatized.





At this very moment, in my mind, I hold a perpetual image of Linnea Quigley in her ineffably rad "horror Workout" video. After a nice *graphic* shower, Linnea does some warm-up stretches and then goes for a run. She encounters some flabby zombies who follow her back to her house, where she leads them in some poolside aerobic routines. Later she unwinds by inviting some friends over for a slumber party and some exercise...all in nightgowns. When something goes bump in the house, her friends begin experiencing an attrition problem.

Much to the disappointment of B-movie fans everywhere, this pinnacle of home fitness instruction has yet to be made available on DVD. The VHS cassette sells for anywhere between 50 and 100 clams online. Or you can watch it here. I warn you though it's not really "work appropriate" (depending on where you work), I suggest you watch this when you know that no one will be able to watch you (that way no one will also never see you attempt some of the moves).

odd gatherings

So when I go across the wonderful Internet, searching for various ingredients to add to my daily delectable treats for you, I sometimes come across things that are just so... well I'll leave it up to you to decide what they are. I've collected a few of them to show you. From me to you ;)

You’re proud of your maternal skills.Which is why when baby has a cold, you’ll want the Nosefrida nasal aspirator, a Swedish solution to kiddie congestion. Just hold the red end in your mouth and put the other end on your little one’s sniffly snout. Then, hold on, suction the mucus out. Gross? Kind of. But a filter prevents it from infecting you. Not really that appealing to me. Available online at nosefrida.com.

Journey to the land at the back of the closet, beyond the feathered boas and flannels, to the box of banished baubles. From high school-era Love pendants to goth spiked cuffs, every piece of jewelry from every ex languishes in a lack of a better home. At the shining new exboyfriend jewelry.com you can put it online and share your story with the world. Here, liberated girlfriends, wives, mistresses, and lovers have a free place to sell, gripe about, and comment on the gilded goods from trysts of old. Each posting asks for the scoop (which should describe the item and relationship), a description of the jewelry, and how the seller rates it. Seller sentiments range from “If it wasn’t weird to wear another man’s God jewelry around your new boyfriend, I’d keep this one” to “You could melt it down and make a cute charm.” Shipping and handling cost extra, but the emotional baggage is free.

I know Louis Vuitton is the king of putting their logo on everything under the sun, but this one takes the gâteau - In honor of White Day in Japan (kind of like Valentine's Day, except you can only give gifts that are white,) Louis Vuitton is offering white fabric roses - with the LV logo printed on a petal. I'm not sure if they're trying to take credit for having designed the roses (pretty sure the shape of these was a no-brainer,) or if they think the logo somehow makes them LV-approved, but I can't imagine anyone foolish enough to part with $39 for each one of these things when white bunny-shaped marshmallows from Kraft are so readily available these days. To me, this makes about as much sense as a double C-monogrammed ice cream cone or D&G fake nails.

The designers of the Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles are def. sci-fi fans. Because they clearly stole the idea from the great (and old) anime series : Ghost in a Shell. Which, ironically, is also about the future and the creation of A.I.

You'll come across a few images and this one just makes me laugh...seriously? Trying to open the market from coke addicted models?

You have to love it when a big corporation (just like the series above) take something from another more "artistic" venue. I'm not saying that Nine-Inch-Nails is poor and starving, but still I hold more respect for the music than I do for the fast food chain...especially when they try and pass it off as "natural" and "free".

original NIN album cover on the left, and McD's on the right.

And that's it for now, but I will have more. I promise! What do you guys think?

A video could help your life

Well you did it again mes petits poissons, you have made my day and sent me a charming video. Where do you come up with this stuff?



No doubt I’m a jaded soul for questioning the the sincerity of Fred Spencer and his lovely wife Sharon. Then again, I was raised on the deadpan weirdness of David Lunch. In a hyper-ironic meme world brimming with Tims, Liams, and Sashas, it's impossible for this charismatic couple from Kelowna, BC to remain above suspicion. But... I want to believe!

What do you think? friends, or faux? Either way, what's not to love?

Time...expired

“Mom always said she wanted a parking meter with ‘time expired,’ ” explains Barbara Sue’s daughter, Sherri Ann Weeks, who along with brother Terry crafted this charming tombstone in Oklahoma. “And she wanted to be on the front row of the cemetery so she could see what was going on. … We gave her what she wanted.”

Some suspected Phtotoshop tomfoolery, but the tombstone has been verified by several newspapers and today by snopes.com. “These are true pictures,” wrote son Terry in response to a blog conversation on the website, where the validity of the tombstone was called into question. “Notice that she passed away on her 64th birthday, so the meter reads 64 year time limit. It is located in Okemah, Oklahoma. I KNOW she is loving the attention. She wanted to make people smile even after she was gone.”

Me personally, I can’t imagine I’ll ever have a tombstone of my own, though I can appreciate a work of art such as the above. By the time I die (if I die of natural causes), I imagine that the world will be so over-populated that spending on a grave plot is going to be something way too expensive and frivolous for me to ever inflict on my loved ones. Plus, I’m sure eventually someone will build high-rises over it which means that I’ll have to go back and haunt them. No, I’d much rather be buried in a forest somewhere, so that I can turn into trees. Or be part of paint.

Touch screen tattoo!

“Her cell phone is ringing, but the display is turned off. She lightly pushes a small dot on the skin on her left forearm to suddenly reveal a two by four inch tattoo with the image of the cell phone’s digital display, directly in the skin of her arm. She answers the call by pushing a tattooed button on her arm. While she’s talking, the tattoo comes to life as a digital video of the caller. When she finishes, the tattoo disappears”.

Now imagine yourself sipping something exotic and maybe reading on a rooftop. Suddenly, the face of a dear friend [presently in Shanghai, for instance] emerges through the skin on your forearm. A long-overdue conversation begins. Not a bad prospect, mm?




(Look ma! Stiff as a board, light as a feather, runs on pizza!)


Body modification may be a somewhat neglected topic here, but every once in a while something truly unique catches our collective eye. Take this render of a blood-fueled subcutaneous cell phone implant, for instance. Revealed by Jim Mielke at Greener Gadgets Design Competition, this is not an actual phone with keypad, earpiece and mic, but rather a thin touch screen – a silicon and silicone pad which runs to on your very own fuel! Myriads of tiny spheres change from clear to black during calls and can be seen through your skin, digital video of the caller coming into view once a call begins. Only a concept at the moment, this is a mod I’ll be signing up for just as the option is available, provided that there is a way to turn the thing off.

Sleep

So apparently I suffer from sleep deprivation....

I was having dinner with one of my friends who just got into med school. He was learning about sleep in his class and we were talking about it. I told him that I try to get a full 8 hours of sleep a day but that I never seem to get it. He laughed and said that’s probably because I don’t adhere to my “natural” sleep cycle. He started getting into a series of lectures about the different stages of sleep and the correlation between body temperature and sleep patterns…it became really complicated and of course I don’t want to regurgitate an entire bio lesson. So I’ll make this short.

Sleep is one of the body’s most mysterious and important processes. It helps you to restore and rejuvenate your entire body; in memory, mood and social behaviors, and in various system functions such as the nervous and immune.

Since it is essential to the maintaining of the body, the body naturally provokes us to sleep via electrical messages from our circadian clocks-the time-keeping, temperature fluctuating, enzyme controlling inner clocks. These inner clocks work with a particular neurotransmitter that “turns off” our body, called adenosine. Adenosine is created in tandem with energy that our cells create to power us through the day. As the level adenosine builds up in our brains, we feel… “sleepy”. Combining this with our circadian devices, we understand that its time to sleep. Once preparing for sleep we enter our sleep cycle.

Sleep cycles vs. sleep hours:
I’m sure you’ve heard that everyone needs about 8 hours of sleep a night, and depending on age it can increase. For example babies need to spend at least 12 – 18 hrs a day asleep, and adolescents need 9. But as you become a “biological” adult, you require less total numbers of sleep hours, and more sleep cycles. Sleep cycles are the number of times that your brain shifts through the five stages of sleep.

Stage 1: (Drowsiness) - When you first fall asleep, you are in Stage 1 sleep. It lasts just about five or ten minutes. Eyes move slowly under the eyelids, and muscle activity slows down. You are easily awakened in this stage, and some can argue that when you zone out in class (or something of the equivalent) you are actually entering in to this Stage.

Stage 2: (Light Sleep) –Here your eye movements stop, heart rate slows, and body temperature decreases. You spend most of your sleep time in stage 2, as your body is continuously shutting down at this point. With all the systems that your body possesses, it’s not a real surprise.

Stages 3 & 4: (Deep Sleep) - During these stages, you are difficult to awaken. People who are awakened during Deep Sleep do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes after they wake up. Your body is immobile and the brain waves patterns at this point are slow and wide spread. This is the most important part of sleep as it is the end of the “cycle” and tells your body if you have thoroughly processed through the entire sleep procedure.

REM: Rapid Eye Movement- Many people argue if this is a stage or not. For now it will be a transition stage, since this occurs at the end of stage 4 and leads back to stage 1 in the sleep cycle. You usually have three to five REM episodes per night. Your eyes jerk rapidly in various directions under your eyelids (hence the name Rapid Eye Movement), and your body continues to be paralyzed. This is the stage where you dream and where you “remember” your dreams.

The first sleep cycles each night contain relatively short REM periods and long periods of deep sleep. But, as the night progresses, REM sleep periods increase in length while deep sleep decreases. By morning, you will spending nearly all the “sleep” time in stages 1, 2, and REM.

Ideally you want to wake up at the end of an REM stage. This is why; when you have no pressure to wake up, you generally wake up after a dream. The end of a REM stage is the end of a cycle, just before you go back into stage 1. The entire thing lasts generally about 90 min. So it’s best to calculate your time in that 90 min time frame.
So you’d be following a sleeping pattern in multiples of 90 min:

1.5 hours
3 hours
4.5 hours
6 hours
7.5 hours

Those are the sleep quantities that you should aim to get, and those are what your body will naturally take, removing the alarm clock. Though this time frame varies between people, the best way to find your timing for a sleep cycle is to pick a weekend, and not set an alarm clock. Go to bed the moment you feel tired and then wake up naturally. Do this for the entire weekend (including Friday night!) and then average out your time. That’s your natural sleep cycle. Ideally you would do this over a week or so, but since the working world cannot wait you must make do with what you can right?

So what are some easy ways to fall asleep?

Nap every single day: nap regularly, keep it short, and make it in the early afternoon. 1) By napping at the same time every day, your body will start to regulate itself to want to nap at that time and it will become easier to fall asleep quickly and take an efficient nap; 2) Keep it short - only nap for about 20 minutes. This length of time, a power nap, is just enough to make you feel refreshed and mentally more alert but doesn’t allow you to go into a deep sleep (which would interfere with falling asleep at night), and; 3) Make sure to nap in the early afternoon - preferably about 20 to 30 minutes after lunch, which is when your body is naturally inclined to feel sleepy, and early enough in the day to not interfere with falling asleep at night.

Make your room cold Your body needs to cool down in order to fall asleep and stay asleep, so do what you can to make your room cool. For me, a cool bedroom has the added benefit of nestling into a heavy comforter, and I find the heavy warmth on top of me very soothing.

Exercise intensely. Don’t just “exercise”, but do so intensely, to the point of feeling physical exhaustion. At the end of the day, this is probably the single best thing for helping induce deep, restorative sleep. When I say “intensely”, I mean intense relative to your capability. For some this may mean running 5 miles, for others it may mean a brisk 20 minute walk that elevates the heart rate. Physical tiredness is absolutely essential to getting a good night’s sleep

Expose yourself to bright light/sunlight soon after waking up. Bright sunlight (or any bright light) tells your body’s natural biological clock that its time to wake up, and that same clock will then be set to tell your body its time to go to sleep about 14 to 16 hours later

Find a bedtime ritual that works for you. I say find the routine that works for you - whatever it is - and do it every night. Find what helps you feel less anxious at the end of the day and incorporate into a nightly ritual.

Do what it takes to manage stress in your life. At some points in our lives we are burdened by a great deal of stress. It may be chronic pain or other health condition, a family or work situation, financial stress, or all combined. And the stressful situation may well be unavoidable. But do what you can to take some control over the stress. There are so many ways to do this - I encourage you to try some and just keep trying until you find what works for you. It can be guided imagery, either with the help of a professional or with CD’s, regular massage, yoga or tai chi, calming music, or a therapeutic run or bike ride after work. We all have different preferences - try one that sounds appealing, but if you find it difficult to stick with it, then try a different one

Anyway, like I said I won’t make this a bio lecture (though it’s truly fascinating). My friend gave me the link to some article and research findings so I suggest you go check it out and read for yourself. Believe me I have a lot more respect for sleep and naps now…and I’m trying to think of ways to incorporate them into my life. I am going to attempt to take a nap at around my lunch and then another one after work (only 15-20 minutes though) and then sleep everyday for 7.5 hours (my sleep cycle number). I’ll up date you guys on the progress.

• http://www.sleepfoundation.org/Alert/030730.cfm
• Center for Applied Cognitive Studies (http://centacs.com/)

yet another reason....

I won’t get into my rant about Hot Topic, since it’s really a waste of time, and I really don’t have that much against the store. But what really gets to me is when they take designs from other designers and try to pass them off as “non-cultural” or Goth. This leads to today’s “you thought we wouldn’t notice” post:

Hot Topic steals SOAP!
Designer Jess Fink is a pretty neat one. She follows the Kuwaii school of Japanese pop design, (which for the rest of you…is “cute” anime- taking inanimate objects and giving them a personality with a cute face). This is nothing against Jess Fink; I think she’s got a great sense of humor…a little bit more complex than the regular Kuwaii designs. She had this wonderful little shirt below.






Recently she posted that she had received an email from a fan of hers saying that Hot Topic has stolen the design and made this:



The rip-off was designed by “Newbreed girl” who seems to have an under construction website. The only way I can explain the stupidity of Hot Topic is because it buys from too many design companies and venders, which leads to either no back checking or they knew what they were ripping off.

This is not the first time that HT has done this. Another case is the recycle heart design. Albeit the execution is not exactly the same, the design is very similar. The designer offered this design to hot topic numerous times over the last few years and each time HT has turned it down.


The Original Design The Hot Topic design

Jess Fink sent a Cease and desist email to both “Newbreed girl (NBG)” and Hot Topic (HT). NBG responded with a statement that said it was unfortunate but probably the cause of hiring freelancers to do t-shirts for them.
“It is my poiicy (sic) to encourage freelancers to use the free Getty photo images as reference points & we also use sketches from the Japanese free clip art books, which have inanimate objects with cute faces & legs etc. which are also very similar to the soap.”This is not the first time that Jess Fink has received this type of response. She received the same one from Todd Goldman, an artist and designer…you can see his painting knock off here.


However, the soap in Goldman’s painting is not even nearly as similar as the design by NBG. Everything on the HT design is similar, the soap is pink, the hands are feet are “stick” and the word “soap” is in the same place…not to mention the same body position. The words also use “butt”…but seriously what does “I love your butt” coming from a soap mean anyway? Hmmm. Jess plans to take up the matter in court. In the meantime, friends have banded together to show their support by making parody images, which include some hot soap on soap slash. It was way too early in the morning for me to behold this Harry Potter image (NWS).

• Gallery of Parody Images (careful some of these are NWS)
• Threadless T-shirt Store so that you can buy it if you like the shirt (the original that is)