Nostalgia

Good Morning Nerdy Bunch it's Monday!

I went home this weekend, and for those of you who are wondering yes I did have some chicken soup. It was the yearly fair and I went on Saturday afternoon. I listened to the main stage act and had my first ever corn dog (Inspired by Hank Green) i didn'

t actually like it that much probably because I don't really like hot dogs.

On the walk home I went through the park near my house, the park I played in as a child. There are lots of big obvious changes. Certain death-trap play-structures have been replaced by sanitary metal bars in jarring colours that don't look like much fun at all. A lot of things were the same though the dusty ball diamond with the weed encroaching, that has always had weeds encroaching. The slide that provided hours of amusement stands as tall as it does in my memory. The monkey bars are tempting, but I don't quite have the enthusiasm for hanging upside-down that my younger self had. I went on the merry-go-round and am pleasantly su

rprised by how fast it spins, no wonder I was so scared of it as a kid. Now, I lean my head back as the sky spins around my head. I am suspended in a perfect nostalgic moment. I feel like I am floating above the ground. I contemplate how the playground and I have changed, and how we have stayed the same. Caught on the edge between laughter and tears I realize that I would never want to go back to where I have been, I have come so far. Descending from my merry-go-round contemplation I walk through a patch of small yellow flowers they are identical to the ones I picked as a child and I am glad that I have come home so I can realize how far I've come.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

Tough question, that

I really don't know what I'd want as a last meal. At the moment I'd probably pick a nice thali, but my obsession with South Asian food is fairly recent and probably won't last that long (my food obsessions never do). A few weeks ago I probably would have picked a veggie stir fry, a few weeks before that a bean chili and so on (although (Italian) pizza is nice too). The probability that my food of choice at any given time would be vegetarian and spicy is rather high though.

... and blackcurrant ice cream for desert, please (or a mint popsicle if it's really hot).

(oh god, I just found an Indian foodie social network (in English)... I'll just start buying clothes three sizes bigger now (they have a six page thread consisting entirely of dal recipes...))

Pizza. Yes.

Koti-pizza's mince meat pizza, family size

Last meal? There is only one answer to that: Pizza.

I love pizza. I could probably eat it for the rest of my life, you know what? You may as well bury me with pizza...ok, maybe not, feel free to cremate me with one if you must though. But yes, John Green is not alone in his forbidden love for this delicious food, no cheri, I too know the magnificent lure of this particular forbidden fruit. I love it so much I could write a bad poem for it! In fact...

Bad Poem For Pizza

O sweet strings of golden sunset,
warm in your brace,
twined with my tongue.
Gentle lover of taste.
A blanket for the yearning mind.

With the soul of purest red,
burn awake the slumbering heart.
The roaring breath of a fiery stead,
the flesh of a cow, turned might of a king.

To you, I bow, the lord of viand.

Oh yes, you just saw someone dedicate a poem for pizza. But enough of this silliness.

There's one Finnish pizza chain, Koti-Pizza (Home Pizza), that makes particularly tasty pizza in my humble opinion. The down side is that they are small and cost a lot. That is why I order a family-sized pizza just for myself when ever I have enough money to spare for such extra things and don't feel like it's too soon to eat another one. Oh and, agreed, this is very unhealthy stuff. But who cares if in this scenario I'm dying and the world is ending, right? Yes. My choice would be pizza from Koti-pizza. With some refreshing, cold soda to drink.

Chicken soup

Good Morning Nerdy Bunch it's Monday,

Imagine it's your last day on earth. Maybe your dying or the world is ending, either way there is not much time left. There are so many things you could do the question is: what will you eat? I know what I would eat, my mom's turkey noodle soup. With a grilled cheese sandwich mad on Canadian rye bread and a home made dill pickle. To drink, a chocolate milkshake. The most important element of this meal is the soup. I love both turkey and chicken noodle soup. Probably because I grew up with it my mom's has always been my favorite. The particular spices she uses are perfection for my taste-buds. This whole meal evokes quiet Sunday lunches with the fall sun streaming through the kitchen window. A sense of safety and family. So, if I knew that I was ending soon, I would eat the things that remind me of home and of family.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

P.S. I have a job interview tomorrow, wish me luck.

Despicable case of art theft

I'm going to use this freebie round of mine to let you know about something I've already posted on yourpants about, along with emailing some newspapers etc. As an artist and a member of the deviantart community along with other art communities, this subject is close to my heart.

Here's the post I made, which I am pretty much quoting word for word here (I encourage you to comment on the thread on the forums to bump it so people can spot it easier and thus get involved).

Hello, fellow nerdfighters! I'd like to call your attention to something and encourage you to spread information about it and possibly even donate to the lawyer fees if you want. So, on to the matter at hand:

Recently the artist community of deviantart.com discovered that presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman's nephew, Chad Lieberman, has been operating several sites (art4love.com and markyourspot.com) in which he sells art for hundreds if not thousands of bucks per piece, claiming it's all made by him. Turns out he has stolen most, if not all, of the art featured on his site from all over the online artist community, especially deviantart, the largest community of artists online. He has stolen from over 100 artists and earned quite a bit of money from this stolen art.

It was all discovered by the online community when there was an article published about him, speaking of 'his projects' in a positive tone, on the South Florida Chronicle (http://sflchronicle.com/news/enterta...ultimedia-art/).

His first site, art4love was forced to close down because of copyright infringement but he soon set up another site, markyourspot.com. Which was also closed down rather recently, but he has shown no signs of stopping, rather lone remorse.

Now several artists from deviantart, led by one known as alexiuss (http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/) , are banding together, gathering money and evidence (which there is already plenty of) to bring upon a class action lawsuit against Chad Lieberman. Alexiuss' goal is to hire the best copyright lawyer in Toronto to handle this large case.

More information can be found here, in one of alexiuss deviations. The image contains some proof of stolen art and background story: http://alexiuss.deviantart.com/art/M...MENT-253771563 In the artist's comment there is also a link for a place where you can donate money for the lawyer fees.

And here is a more comprehensive list of known stolen art, showing their original creators and images of the now closed site art4love. It's all in the form of flash images that you can browse by clicking the arrows on the images. There are three separate parts and artists are listed in the information box below the image.

Part 1: http://gene-ash.deviantart.com/art/A...-art-253359597
Part 2: http://gene-ash.deviantart.com/art/A...rt-2-253778066
Part 3: http://gene-ash.deviantart.com/art/A...rt-3-253782704

Deviants (members of deviantart), including me, have made several blogs and articles about this matter on deviantart, as artists world wide have become enraged by this. There are hundreds of comments of people expressing their disgust.

Here is a link to a blog that has collected several screen shots of articles and posts in which Chad Lieberman incriminates himself: http://redbeancookie.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/chad-love-part-deux/ Apparently some places have started to take them down if the author of the entry is to believe.

Here are some extra journal/article links:
Blog on the subject by cartoonist (and nerdfighter) Tom Peterson: http://tompreston.deviantart.com/journal/43383753/
An article of discovering that after being forced to close down art4love due to copyright, Chad Lieberman set up another site, markyourspot.com: http://news.deviantart.com/article/158845/

What is that "dream" thing people keep on talking about?

Darn it, I missed last week, and this week I don't really have much to say :(

I've been blessed with extremely deep sleep ever since I was a baby (massive thunderstorms, people emptying her tent, fire alarms... enika sleeps on), so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I generally don't remember my dreams (not even for a split second after waking up). There's one particularly scary dream from my childhood, which I still remember both because it was bloody scary (someone was trying to drop cars on us) and because for many, many years it was the only time I actually remembered dreaming (I actually believed I didn't dream until I found out everyone does a few years ago).
Nowadays I do very occasionally remember dreams, but only when I don't sleep well, which is usually when I'm anxious, and usually just tackle whatever I'm anxious about in a more or less "real" setting (even if the characters seem to be rather randomly plucked from my life). Oddly enough I remember things like thinking in-dream that I've been to certain dream places before, sometimes I even think I've been revisiting the same for years, but I wouldn't actually be able to tell you if that's the case, if I even dreamed that at all, or what those places look like when I'm awake.

Vivid Dreams

I almost always remember my dreams and it's always so vivid.

I have recurring dreams where I would glide from tree to tree like how they would in the movie "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" or I would be eating something that I've been craving.

Sometimes I would have dreams that sort of happens in real life. Like the one time where I dreamt that I was trapezing in Singapore and weirdly enough they had it in Sentosa when I visited. Or I dreamt that they would be building condos in a particular area and after a year they did. And it's not the type where I saw it and said that I deamt about it. I actually write my dreams down sometimes so I can tell my sister about it.

Sometimes I get dreams were nothing makes sense. I had a dream that I went to the beach with my friends and we lived in a colorful pigeonhole type house where we had to climb ladders to get to our rooms. Another is that I was in a tea party that turned into a wedding, but because the wedding is taking forever to start it tuned into a club . Those are my favorite once because it so interesting to share.

Drew the Pigeonhole House at the beach circa 1998

QOTD: Have you had any dreams that came true?

Hear from you guys soon

RUBEN IV

Nightmare

Good Morning Nerdy bunch it's Monday,

I rarely remember my dreams I typically only remember them if they have woken me up. This usually happens because they have made me cry. I have what I call anxiety dreams when I'm really stressed that typically involve someone dying.

So a few weeks ago I had an absolutely horrible dream. I was captured by a serial killer who kept girls in his basement and he made me help pour acid on them. I didn't want to but I had to or else he would pour acid on me so I was crying and I woke up. I'm lying in bed sobbing from this horrible dream and I can't imagine how I'm going to handle the day because I'm so stressed out. So I decided instead of what I usually do with a nightmare which is crush it into a tiny box in the back of my head where hopefully it will leave me alone. I decided to give it a happy ending I let myself remember what was happening in the dream and then I changed things, I stole his keys and freed the girl who was still alive and we ran away. That made it so I was able to get up and deal with people that day instead of curling up under my covers and refusing to come out. I hope this is a sign that I'm getting wiser as I grow up.

Best Wishes,

Allysa

Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so.

Let us discuss the land of dreams. Share a somehow memorable dream/nightmare you've had. Maybe it was so bizarre that is stuck with you, or so beautiful, funny or horrible...

I believe it was my turn to give out the topic this time so here you go.

I'm going to share a dream that has stuck with me for years, surprisingly not because it was something awful but because it was so beautiful I keep wishing I could go back to it.

I was standing at a market place of sorts. It was a large area covered in cobble stone. Surrounding the market place were several buildings of beautiful old-timey tile and stone architecture, I think many of the buildings were factories. In contrast to all the stone and tile, there was a gorgeous park with the greenest grass and a nice fountain. One side of the park was framed by a row of Oak trees.

The sun was shining, making the green grass of the park practically glow, along with the Oak leaves. I was in what looked like it could have been 19th century England. I was wearing the clothes of a fairly upper class woman, it seemed. I could hear the sound of horse hooves hitting the cobbled streets as people, mainly lower class workers in their worn clothes, used them to pull carriages around. I was not paying particular attention to any of those people, I was looking at a man in a dark suit and a top hat, who was discussing with a man who I assume was someone who worked at horse stables, maybe a stable master. They were smiling as they spoke and I was content at just looking at them in silence, from a distance. The man in a top hat was my husband, I think it was an arranged marriage but I wasn't upset, I felt fine and warm.

After a while my husband and the stable master approached me, walking a beautiful horse with a copper-red coat towards me. Apparently the horse was my wedding present. They helped me up onto its back and like a proper lady, I sat there with both of my legs on the same side of the saddle (sidesaddle). Suddenly something spooked the horse, or it just decided it was time to go - I'm not sure. It started to gallop, fast, like a race horse. The sun made its red coat shine, everything around us still looked so beautiful. I wasn't scared, I just conformed to the movement of the horse, but I did feel an adrenaline rush as I struggled slightly to hold on and keep myself from slipping (if any of you have ridden sidesaddle, you know it's definitely not the best position to go with if you want to stay firmly on the horse). The stable master tried to run after us, but he couldn't keep up. We were off and I still had that warm feeling. That's when I woke up.

After waking up I couldn't think about anything else but the beautiful imagery. The landscape, the colors, the horse...it was all gorgeous. I wish I could paint it but I'm just not good enough. It's been years since I had this dream and I still haven't dared to even try and sketch out what I saw onto a paper. It's kind of hard to explain but I fear that if I even try, the memory of the beauty will fade or change if I make an attempt to spill it onto a paper. I don't want to let go of it. Not just yet.

Mahal Kita

The people I love the most is my family. I am fortunate enough to be in a a family that shows me the importance of saying "I love you" to one another. Not that we use those words loosely, but whenever we see it fit we'll most likely say it. Considering that fact, I have never said those words to anyone else but my dad, mom, and my sister.

The thing I love the most is food. No surprise there. Food has really been good to me as well. It is my living and without it i'd literally and figuratively starve.

A little lesson on Tagalog which is our mother tongue. Love in my language is "mahal" (/maˈhal/). That exact same word also means expensive or something with value that is more than you would like to spend or can afford. I really like how it implies that it is something you can never pay for in full and that it is a gift you can give someone and not expecting anything back.

QsOTD: How do you say "I love you" in your language? How many ways do you know how to say "I love you"?

Hear from you guys soon

RUBEN IV

I love the whole world

Good morning friends, it's Monday!

I love my mom a lot. Out of all the people and things that exist in the world the one that comes first to my mind when I think of love is my mom. Our relationship isn't perfect, we fight and generally disagree. I don't tell her every thing that's going in my life, but when something is bugging me or I'm overwhelmed I call her first. Maybe I'll have a friend or a partner some day who I'm close enough with that I can share the things I'm most proud and most afraid of but for now it's still my mom.

I love books and Libraries. They are one of the most important things in my life. When I'm stressed or going stir crazy I don't go to the mall I go to the Library. The quiet and the smell of books relaxes me. Books are one of the only things that can completely take my mind off things. when I'm reading I so immersed in someone else's world that I can forget about my own, forget about my own problems and worries for a while.

These are the two things I love the most. Of course I love the rest of my family and I love my friends. But their impact isn't quite as far reaching, they don't hold the same place in my heart.

Love,

Allysa

All you need is Love?

So, I was thinking about what theme I could set for this week. In honour of Esther Day, which was Wednesday, I've decided to dedicate this week to things/people we love. Oh, and just in case you haven't seen Hank's Esther Day video, here it is :

I'll leave my post till next Thursday, but I'd like to see what you guys have to say on the subject :)

summer break :(

It's summer „break“ over here, which basically means all students either do internships or are locked in their rooms writing papers. It's the latter for me, which is rather a shame considering how nice it's outside, and how big my books are (way too big and heavy to take to the riverside). So I'm trying to keep myself from procrastinating too much (so far I've seen neither Friends nor The West Wing in their entirety, which is rather an improvement over the last years).

So basically I'm not going out much, and spend most of my day reading up on the medieval Flemish art and court scene, which means I have absolutely nothing to talk about. Yay. I could tell you about medieval feasts featuring orchestras playing in giant pies and stuff, but I'm too lazy to scan the pictures. One day I'm going to use my accidental expertise in early stage design for something useful (it's an utterly fascinating topic, since they did all sorts of crazy stuff you wouldn't expect them to be able to do back then (and that would be way to expensive to do today), but, you know...)

Ooh, a few days ago we saw a semi-staged reading of Dracula near a pseudo-medieval tower above town (the one we like to bullshit tourists into believing is the Rapunzel tower, despite it having been build after the Grimms snuffed it – it's a bit of a hobby among towns that have any connection to the Grimms ;) we like to lay claim on Little Red Riding Hood as well). Anyways, the play was awesome (mostly thanks to the great actors). We were sitting outside, in the middle of the forest, and the sound was so astonishingly good that you really couldn't tell whether the birds you heard in the background were real or not. Plus they served really strong (vampire-themed) drinks, so the audience was rather giggly by the end. Only getting back down to town was rather an adventure (it was dark, near midnight, and none of the buses went where they were supposed to go. By foot it would've been a ten minute walk through a dark forest potentially full of mines or a 90 minute walk along deserted roads (... and highways).)

QotD: What's your most useless area of expertise?

Slap in the face

I say eat the way you want to eat!

I use to eat everything, but for almost 6 years now I haven't eaten pork, at least not consciously. But only because suddenly I can't stand the smell and taste of it anymore. My sister is pescatarian but that doesn't mean she's healthier than everyone else.

As to being healthy, I think diet is just 10% of the battle. You can be vegetarian or vegan but eat french fries everyday and still get a heart attack. What you really need to do is exercise. But, although it should be, health isn't exactly my focus in terms of food but taste.

If you don't like how it taste then don't eat it. But at least try it once, otherwise how will you know if you like it or not. I actually got slapped in the face for being adventurous with food. We have a delicacy here in the Philippines which is called balut. It's a duck embryo, around 16-21 days old, boiled and eaten with salt and/or vinegar. I told my roommate that I have and liked eating balut. She slapped me in the face, jokingly of course. I'm not saying I didn't deserve it cause I told her the story partly to freak her out a little. We were having a debate about prop. 2. Mind you my roommate eats more meat than I do. That's a whole other story that I really don't have time to talk about and isn't that interesting anyway.

My point is try it and if you don't like it don't eat it.

QOTD: What's the most exotic thing you've eaten?

Hear from you guys soon

RUBEN IV

P.S. Sorry for the late post =P

Lions And Antelopes

Terminology legend for those too lacy to Google or use dictionary:

Vegetarian
- a person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl, or, in some cases, any food derived from animals, as eggs or cheese, but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc.

Vegan
- a vegetarian who omits all animal products from the diet.

Pescetarian
- a vegetarian who will eat fish; also called pescevegetarian, piscatorial.

I’m an omnivore, I haven’t moved on from the nutrition that evolution has created my bunodont teeth to indicate. This is to say that I eat meat, as well as fish, vegetables, fruit and so on. I don’t have a healthy diet, I don’t count calories, and though I’ve considered trying out vegetarianism and pescatarianism in the past, it hasn’t lead to anything. I guess I’m not motivated enough. Once I saw this horrible documentary with no narration that showed the brutal way animals are treated in the food production process in some French factory or something along those lines. The scene I remember the best was one where masses of little baby chicks were moved around on a conveyor belt to these plastic boxes. Some chicks kept falling off and this raunchy looking factory-worker lady just threw them back on, like they hadn’t even been alive. No emotion, no carefulness. It was like she had been throwing rocks, bored as hell. And these poor chicks just sat on that conveyor, fell around, chirping. Still, that documentary wasn’t enough for me to pull a Lisa Simpson and start rejecting meat over night because of emotional reasons (it did make me want to adopt all the poor baby chicks of the world though). I guess all I can do is check the brand on what I eat and prefer local brands. Luckily I don’t eat that much chicken so, yeah…at least I’m keeping myself from contributing to some cruelty. Eh?

As for the versus idea of the topic, I don’t find that particularly interesting. I won’t go to health benefits and such since that’s a topic everyone and their mother has likely gone through multiple times in their lives - I think some were already covered here too. Plus there’s google for finding out pro and con arguments on that. I’m not passionate enough on the subject to fill this post with my own arguments.
What I will say is that I respect other people’s nutritional choices and don’t feel the need to start shoving meat down anyone’s throat. Many of my friends are vegetarians and it’s fine by me since they don’t exactly try to shove their lifestyle down my throat and they are not snobby about it. Vegetarianism is not going to harm anyone, except for the one on the diet if they aren’t careful, so I don’t mind, why should I?

Only unpleasant thing is that some vegetarians and vegans alike show a nasty higher than thou attitude about their ethical and nutritional choices. I think the worst of it I saw on PETA’s forums. One day I figured I’d give the site a look and what I saw was a board full of thousands of aggressive vegans whose attitude was utterly disgusting. In one thread some poor new member asked if she was a bad person for eating meat or something along those lines and a hoard of higher than thou vegans, senior members, pretty much told her that yes she is the worst person in the world and she doesn’t really love animals. It was like witnessing a crowd of 20-year-olds give a 5-year-old little girl the beating of her life. That sort of an attitude is not going to help anyone. I’ve seen somewhat similar rude behavior from the carnivore side too. Mostly crude jokes in the form of face book groups though. Nothing as flashy as PETA forums. I guess I’ve been lucky on that front. Generally I’m surrounded by accepting people in real life so such conflicts rarely come up there. Most of the rudeness I witness is online where it's bound to be harsher than in real life due to a certain degree of anonymity.

I guess I'm done with this ramble. I don't think I had anything concrete to say but... I posted! Late, sure, but better late than never. :P