creative twist on children's imaginations

What an AWESOME idea... click here!!

"Jung's new series of photos, "Wonderland" (2004), presents costumed adolescents posing in sets based as closely as possible on children's drawings. He collaborates with many people to bring to life the boundless imagination in the drawings. For four months, Jung oversaw art classes in four kindergartens in Seoul and collected 1,200 drawings by children between the ages of five and seven. After pouring through them, he carefully selected 17 drawings and interpreted their meanings. Then he recruited 60 high school students by passing out handbills at their schools in which he invited them to act out the scenarios in the children's drawings. In order to recreate faithfully drawing details such as dresses with uneven sleeves or buttons of different sizes, he convinced five fashion designers to custom make the clothing for the photo shoot. He also made props unlike any scale found in reality but similar to those in the drawings." (http://photokaboom.photogrowth.com/2008/02/yeondoo_jung_wonderland.html)

World Mapper

really awesome map site shows you, visually, the numbers of nearly everything you can gather statistics on...

http://www.worldmapper.org/atozindex.html

to each his own

"This gets me thinking. I am just the sum of the experiences that have fashioned my personality into the type of person who has to make a big deal about being sustainable. A stockbroker is just the sum of the experiences that fashion his or her personality into the type of person who digs playing the market. There's no better or worse. No Impact just becomes the practice that works for me. Playing the market is the practice that works for someone else.

If I can maintain that attitude, if I can understand the human motivations and values that underpin everyone's actions, even if I don't necessarily agree with them, I have a chance of meeting people on common ground and talking to them, not as a person who is morally superior, but as a friend. And people listen more openly to their friends.

... I want to attract people and change their minds, I need to understand them and their foibles and appreciate them for the fact that they may be able to offer some great pointers on lipstick and sunglasses. Think what the people of the world would look like if they all dressed like environmentalists. Would that even be a world worth saving?"

from: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/sustainable-liv.html

and i'm still hungry

cold wheat beers
frozen custard and chilled java
extrememochafrenchvanillapumpkin cappuccino
banana nut muffins
gummy worms
cheddar pretzels
fresh bread and olive oil
shrimp fra diavolo
turkey provolone avocado sandwich
medium rare-ly perfected sirloin
melt in your mouth cheese burger
bacon cheddar fries
pasta and homemade gravy

(the most irresistible
delectable
delicious
overwhelmingly-beyond-satisfying
part?
you.)

...directionless part two...

"The American Dream is for immigrants. The rest of us are better acquainted with entitlement or boredom than we are with our own survival mechanisms. And when confronted with a fight-or-flight scenario, the latter usually takes precedence. Escape is our action of choice: escape through pharmaceuticals, escape through technology, and plain old running away in search of something else, anything else...

I continually revisit the words of some sociologist who I read in college. I think that is was Weber or Durkheim...He believed that the modern mind is determined to expand its repertoire or experiences, and is bent on avoiding any specialization that threatens to interrupt the search for alternatives and novelty. Many people would call that approach to life a crisis, immaturity, or being out of touch with reality. It could also be called the New American Dream. [Screw] the simple pursuit of financial stability. Here's to finding fulfillment in novelty, excitement, adventure, and autonomy."

-Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, Thomas B Kohnstamm

directionless postcollegiate life

"...With such a character-defining foothold in the career world, I no longer have to make excuses for the life I lead. No longer do I have to explain my directionless postcollegiate life to incredulous eyes and repetitive questions, like: "What are you doing next year?" "Don't you want to do something with your life?" and my favorite, "When are you going to get a real job?" I am no longer just Thomas, the supposed slacker, backpacker bum, or permanent student. I am Thomas, the employee of ________, ________, ________ & _________ LLP, and I am going places.

I make more money than I reasonably should, putting papers into chronological order (chroning, in office-speak). My skill set also includes entering numbers into Excel spreadsheets and working the copier and fax machine. Between those projects, I search for old high school friends' names on Google; play online Jeopardy against my office trivia nemesis, Jerry; and generally while away the hours of my life...

Yes, I know, I really have it pretty good. There are people starving in Africa. And there are plenty of people here in New York who would love the chance to be in a cubicle all day and not have to operate deep-fat fryers, drive garbage trucks... or whatever it is they do. The problem is that I am an ungrateful by-product of a prosperous society -- the offal of opportunity. I am just another liberal arts graduate who bought the idea that life and career would be a fulfilling intellectual journey. Unfortunately, I am performing a glorified version of punching the time clock, and the financial rewards don't come anywhere near filling the emotional void of such diminished expectations."

-Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, Thomas B Kohnstamm

a Canadian in Japan...

...messes with a Japanese man...

...a small voice appeared beside me.
"Excuse me, " it said. "May I practise my English with you?"
..."I like very much the Macaroni Westerns. Do you like?" And then, in a sudden shift: "Tell me, when writing a letter, do you use P-S or B-S as the end? I understand that one is considered slang and the other is a way of -- "
"It's P-S. " [I answered]
"B-S, " he asked.
"P-S. P as in pneumonia and s as in psychotic."
-Hitching Rides with Buddha, Will Ferguson

hahahahaha

how to guess?

Is it just me, or would it actually be less work just to LEARN the information on which you are being tested than to memorize these crazy rules for guessing? Probably just me, especially if you are good with the logic behind all of these and its makes sense quickly to you, so that you can memorize it easily...

still crazy...
http://drzeuss.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-guess-on-standardized-tests.html

which rung are you on?

When are you getting promoted? When are you getting married? When are you going to have babies?

When are people going to realize you can make your own path in life and you don't have to follow theirs? When are people going to realize there are more important and interesting things to talk about?

""What are you doing after graduation?"

"I'm so sick of that question." John said. "No one really cares what I'm doing after graduation. It's conversational masturbation. We spent the first two years asking each other what our major was and the last two years asking what we're doing after graduation. Why don't we ever talk about what we're really interested in?" Everyone sat in silence for a moment."

Ah-un

"You approach Shinto shrines...and the entrances are usually guarded by a pair of stone lion-dogs...komu-inu, "Korean dogs"...One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open mouthed lion-dog is named Ah, the other is named Un, or more properly, nn. "Ah" is the first sound you make when you are born, "nn" the last sound you make when you die. "Ah" is the breath inhaled that begins life, "nn" the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. Ah is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, n the last. And so, between these two lion-dogs, you also have the A and the Z, the Alpha and Omega. In the original Sanskrit, ah-un means, "the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed."

In Japan, people who are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in duet, are called ah/un-no-kokyu. Kokyu means "breathing," and the phrase suggests perfect, exquisite harmony: ah/un-no-kokyu, two or more breathing as one. If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, then common breath is the ideal to which Japan-and indeed, much of Asia-aspires. The word harmony in Japanese has the same cachet that the word freedom has in the West...

On a less esoteric level, ah-un also refers to old married couples (or even old friends) who have been together for so long that they no longer have to finish their sentences. One begins with "Ah..." and the other agrees with "Nn..." (which is the Japanese equivalent of "uh-huh") and the entire meaning is understood."

-Hitching Rides with Buddha, Will Ferguson