May 31, 2010

30 Days: Day 10 - A photo of you taken over ten years ago.

When I was fourteen I was just your normal middle school girl doing middle school things. I collected bunny memorabilia, ate a lot of food, and never studied. Most of the time, though, I just looked hawt in my sailor uniform while singly badly to children's pop songs.

These are not enough foods to sate my appetite!

Then one day it started raining stuffed cats, which was really freaky, but hey! It was a cute stuffed cat! And it seemed nice, so I gave it a pat and left it on a bridge for the homeless to pick up and carry with them. I needed to do my good deed for the week, okay?

Is this edible?

Well, that was a bad idea because clearly Buddah did not intend for the cat to go to the homeless and shot it through my window later that afternoon. I was pretty high at that point, disappointed by another failing grade, so I think that explains why the cat started speaking to me, giving me jewelry and cosmetics. Clearly I didn't steal these things, oh no.


Pink and sparkles makes it better. Like vampires.

I also found out that using these two items together turned me into the pretty super gaijin, Sailor Moon!

Like, in the name of the, like, Moon, I'll, like, super punish you!

Then I went to fight some bad guys, but got really hungry, so I let the creeper in the tuxedo do all the work for me while I fulfilled my munchie needs.

Mmm...looks good enough to eat...

But then I woke up, food littered around me, crumbs dusting my clothes. Was it all a dream? Was it real? I may never know for sure. But the one thing I do know is that every time I light up, I get to save the world one more time.

May 30, 2010

30 Days: Day 9 - A picture you took.

As I've mentioned before, I love taking pictures, so this day is going to be a tad difficult. After mulling through my various photo albums for a bit, I finally settled on this image.

Signed The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade books.

A few months ago Penny Arcade went on a book signing tour across the country, starting in Seattle, of course, in the U District at U Bookstore. I drove over right after work, missing a good portion of their Q&A, but that's okay because I was still in time to wait in line for a while with three very beautiful books.

By the way, if anyone with some power is reading this, I NEED a poster version of the cover, kthnx.

One was for a friend I stilled owed money to from PAX09, and the other for a friend currently stuck in Utah for a few years. Poor dude-- I MEAN. I TOTES BOUGHT THEM BOOKS FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN I'M AWESOME LIKE THAT. BECAUSE I AM AWESOME. Trufax. I don't lie. Only communists lie, and I am not a communist.

May 29, 2010

30 Days: Day 8 - A photo that makes you angry/sad.

Uh...I'm not sure I really like this day. I don't think I want to voluntarily go find a picture that makes me angry, but I suppose I will. For the greater good. Something like that.

Young Anakin
:(

Vanessa Hudgens keeping Zac Efron from his True Gay Self.
 :|

Seriously, without her, he could go on to be the next big thing in gay. Look! He's already trying! Poor dear.


Harvesting unicorns for food.
>:|

UNICORNS ARE REAL AND ENDANGERED. DO NOT HUNT OUR BEAUTIFUL MAJESTIC FRIENDS FOR THEIR RAINBOWS. But if you do, please send me half of your cut. It's the law.

Batman & Robin
*weep*

May 28, 2010

30 Days: Day 7 - A photo that makes you happy.

I love taking pictures. Mostly stupid pictures, but pictures nonetheless. I have many photos that make me happy, so it's hard for me to pin it down to just one...so I thought I'd post a few of my favorites and why. ENJOY.

BABs meet for the first time for a wedding.

Back in the year 2000 I stumbled upon the Bolt.com Anime Board thanks to one of my friends in middle school. People have this negative notion about online relationships and the people that forge them, and you know, I can't fault them for that. There's a very good reason why that notion exists. Fortunately, my negative experience with online friendships is slim, and this group is a living testament to how online relationship can be real, healthy ones. One of us got married last year, and for the first time in our ten year history, we all met up at the same place and the same time to celebrate.

These people are real and true friends. I have loads of friends here and around Washington that I see and speak to on a regular basis, but the BABs are irreplaceable just like any good friend should be.

Han Solo visits the Bier Stube!

And these are some of my Seattle friends (some of them I went to high school with)! We took Han Solo to a bar! It was one of the best nights ever and I actually made prints of all these images because I loved it so much.

Hanson - The Walk Tour 2008 at The Moore

Yeah, that's Hanson. I'm sure some of you are hitting your back button and intend to never come back here again after finding out I'm a Hanson fan. I'm not going to defend myself because that's silly, everyone is allowed to like what they do (though I do encourage you to listen to their latest single if you like retro pop tunes mixed with a big band sound-- they're not who they used to be), but I will say they've been my favorite band since 1996 and 2008 was the first time I ever got to see them in concert. Ever. It's lame that it took me so long and I hope I get to see them at least one more time, especially since their new album sounds fantastic so far.

May 27, 2010

30 Days: Day 6 - Whatever I want!

Today I get to write about whatever I want, YAY~ Except not really because I have no idea what I really want to use this one precious entry for. I could do something meaningful, like discuss whether or not video games are art per Ebert's declaration that they're not. I could write about how excited I am for PAX. I could give a bad review to Shrek Forever After, or an awesome review for Obasan, a local Japanese restaurant in lower Queen Anne (seriously, awesome). I could talk about my addiction to spider solitaire, why I hate my job, and the stupid things people say to me while at work.

I'd probably lose my job for that, though, so I'll save that for another time.

What I think I'll do, though, is post a series of MS Paint drawings I had done for my friend during our various conversations over GTalk while at work. For context, she's identified as a cow in our group of friends, and I a bunny. It's a long story that's not funny, so I won't waste your time explaining it here, other than the animals are in no way a representation of physical selves or any other part of our character.

I think it also goes without saying that the pictures directly correlate to whatever we were conversing about at the time, and I've put them in chronological order.


May 26, 2010

30 Days: Day 5 - Favorite Quote

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. --Victor Hugo

This pretty much sums up how I feel about relationships. I'd expand on that more, but I have an entire separate blog dedicated to just that, so I feel it would be a little redundant to re-emphasize that here.

In the meantime, here is the best quotable story of dumb straight from my life. Just FYI, I'm Korean and adopted.

May 25, 2010

30 Days: Day 4 - Favorite Book

As I told my friend today over Gtalk, today I will not be a child! Sure, I could sit here and blab about Harry Potter, which is one of my favorite book series, but I would mostly be mocking it...which you may or may not find interesting considering that everyone knows about Harry Potter.

Anyway, I'll be brief and say it's Memoirs of a Geisha. Memoirs has it's own set of Very Unique Problems, one of them spurring the misconception of what a mizuage actually is and that legal battle that occurred after the author outed his retire geisha source, who then fell under much scrutiny from her peers as geisha life is one of secrecy. This makes sense as the entire art of geisha is to entertain and appeal (for example, Inara's profession of a Companion in Firefly is based off of geisha). These girls work behind painted faces and beautifully crafted robes with the only intent to serve their patron, not express themselves and their individuality.

You know how they say part of what makes a woman desirable is because of her mystery? How your boyfriend and husbands don't want to know that their girlfriends and wives poop? That's the life of geisha in a nut shell.

Aside from mizuage, the book is reported to follow geisha life somewhat accurately, and Sayuri's narrative is vivid in description and writing devices. She speaks in similes and metaphors, and you can tell that her character embodies the idea of an entertainer, even in her fictitious memoirs.

And yes, Sayuri is fictitious, even though much of her life is based on real life events and career choices of actual geisha.

The book spans Sayuri's early childhood, when she was known as Chiyo, and spends a great portion of the book describing her years when she first became a geisha, right before Japan was attacked by Allied Forces in WWII. A small bit of the book describes her life immediately afterwards before doing a quick recap of her life from that point until present. I would classify this as a book for those interested in romance and historical fiction as romance plays a key role in the plot. This is also a novel about female gender roles, a women's world, which can make it less appealing to those who do not find that subject matter particularly intriguing.

The book never directly deals with misogyny, classism, racism, and other big issues that were obviously abundant during this time which is often criticized. However, in historical context and the narrative, it would be highly inappropriate for Sayuri to ever outright address those issues, and I feel her passing commentary on the issues themselves is telling enough on how she feels about being a geisha and the life of women in 1930's Japan. Of course, critics point out that the book is written by a man, which is a valid point, take that as you will.

The book was also made into a movie, which was splendid eye candy and had its own host of controversies, but did not do the story justice. Figures.

May 24, 2010

30 Days: Day 3 - Favorite Show

I realize that I'm going to sound like a child if I keep being completely honest with my favorite faves. Oh well, at least I'm honest. I can't be faulted for that, right?

Another bit of honesty, I don't watch a lot of TV. Well, not anymore. This is mostly due to not having cable, but after I grew out of waking up early on Saturday morning for cartoons, I never felt the need to watch Must See TV. I watch my shows when I want to, dammit, not when TV Guide says. This is why streaming has become a blessing for me because as much as I love How I Met Your Mother, if I want to go out on a Monday night, I refuse to feel torn between watching Barney be awesome and potentially having my own HIMYM night out in Seattle. I prefer living over watching someone else live out their life.

Anyway, so yes, How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite TV shows. So is Firefly. And Everwood. And The Powerpuff Girls, She-RA, and the Care Bears will always have a special place in my heart and on my shelf. However, my absolute favorite show, one that I willing watch any time it's on, is Boy Meets World.

Remember when I said I'm going to sound like a child? Right.

So it's continuity is shot, it's frequently over the top and unrealistic, and by the end of the series the show has jumped the shark and the characters have become caricatures of themselves. And yet every single episode is hilarious, every episode has some bit of truth that resonated with me growing up and still resonates with me now when I take trips down memory lane. Most importantly, it has MR. FEENY.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from George Feeny. I even own the t-shirt.

There isn't much more I can say in order to describe why I irrationally love this show so much. Why the finale made me cry long after it ended. So here's a clip of some of the funnier moments of the seven seasons the show aired. ENJOY.



May 23, 2010

30 Days: Day 2 - Favorite Movie

My favorite movie, without a doubt, is The Lion King. Sure, I love Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Spaceballs, Howl's Moving Castle, and Sherk. I absolutely adore Jurassic Park. And I'm sure sometime in the future I will find another movie that has charmed me as much as WALL-E in order to add to my very short list of favorites out the 1000+ movies I've seen, but The Lion King will always be at the top.

 And then God showered light down from the heavens
and consumed all of Africa by Summoning Bigger Lion.

In the sixth month of 1994, Disney released it's 32nd animated feature, and Mufasa said, "This was good." Four years later Disney made a sequel, and Mufasa said, "Oh ell no." But that's less important because we're talking about THE LION KING. They used the opening musical number for their trailer, and people all around the world were peeing their pants because those few minutes were enough to show how awesome this movie was going to be. Forget explaining the plot, advertising Big Name Actors and a Big Name Musician, or combining all the good bits in one spoiler package-- the trailer didn't need that. The art, the music, and how these elements combined was enough to captivate and enthuse my wee little self sixteen years ago.

For those of you who somehow don't know about The Lion King despite it's fame, let me break it down for you. Darth Mufasa promises his entire kingdom of the African Savanna to his son, Simba. Or Kimba. Or Jimba TT if I'm going to go with the bad naming joke. Anyway, Darth M's brother is annoyed and kills him and convinces JTT that it's his fault, so JTT runs away and everyone thinks he's dead. So brother takes over and kills everything. Meanwhile, JTT has become a Man and befriended his dinner, a pig and a weasel cat. Eventually a hot lioness and monkey persuade JTT to return, he defeats his uncle, and then casts curaja with a might roar. It's Disney's version of Hamlet, to put it simply, but without Simba becoming crazypants like his father's younger Star Wars self and murdering everyone.

Most people criticize how closely it resembles Kimba the White Lion, a crappy Janime from 1960, and by closely resembles is that Kimba leaves his home and then returns later to save it. And his name is like "Simba." Oh yeah, totally the same story...if you completely ignore the fact that it involves human interference, environmentalism, and that sort of thing. But I'm talking about the finish product, pre-production of The Lion King was a bit different.

But The Lion King is basically everything I want from a movie, and the fact that it's animated proves the absolute power this film possess. Mufasa's death sparked some controversy, and I attribute that more to the ability the film had to connect to the audience on an emotional level. Manipulative? Perhaps, but that was the intent, the entire purpose of that scene, and we all fell into it without question because we were all so engrossed by this story of animated lions that we forgot they were lions. We forgot they were animated. We forgot it wasn't real, and yet we felt something very real.

Ignoring the sequels, this was properly followed up by the Big Damn Musical on Broadway that I was fortunate enough to see when they did their tour through Seattle last year. The movie is completely deserving, and the musical also deserving of the praise it has received thus far. I highly encourage everyone to see this!



May 22, 2010

30 Days: Day 1 - Favorite Song

The 30 days meme has been circling around for years, though I've never done it before. As I tend to not blog very frequently, I thought this would be a good way to get me into the habit. So day one is, as you can see, favorite song.

Well, that's difficult. I have a whole playlist dedicated to my absolute favorite songs, and it's always growing. I suppose I'll always have a soft spot for the following:




Sometimes I'm Rick Rolled at work as my coworkers like to fight over the radio and, at some point, end up on the 80's station. I usually end up dancing at my desk without realizing it. Though, last week I was kind of Rick Rolled, only not really. It took me a while to figure out it was this song:




The actual music video doesn't allow embedding, but it's worth watching. Anyway, I think I might like this song better. I downloaded the entire album for the hell of it and periodically play it when I have people in the car. Cue awesome.

Okay, let's try this again with a little honestly. Bellow is a list of my current favorite songs and the appropriate YouTube video to go with them. I promise that none of them are Rick Astley. Well, I tried not to, anyway. I'll also warn you that I like crappy music.

Blue Train - Asian Kung Fu Generation
Clone - Last Alliance (ignore the crappy video game images in the video)
Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
Let It Rain - Ok Go
Thinking 'Bout Somethin' - Hanson
About A Girl - The Academy Is...

May 16, 2010

Nom Nom - Rotini pasta with cream sauce and fresh spinach.

I like to cook and bake, and fortunately I'm not half bad at it. I've given up on being hush-hush about it since everyone who knows me found out about this within the last year, so now I'm a slave to the guys and girls in my life whose only accomplishment in the kitchen is starting a fire. In the mean time I thought I'd try to turn this into a benefit for the rest of you out there in internet land, especially you nerds out to impress your girlfriends (or maybe boyfriends).

When I cook, I typically like it to be fast a simple since I normally get home at 7:30pm from work and am just generally lazy. For the most part the dishes I share will be of that variety, but we're not talking Top Ramen fast and simple, k? Also, most importantly when it comes to cooking, once you learn a recipe, don't be afraid to improvise with it!

Rainbow Rotini with a Cream Sauce and Fresh Spinach

How I made it: