Woot ! Another Kubrick from Medicom in my collection. I waited amost 4 months for this item and finally it has arrived. As usual the quality is top notch. Have a look !
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
Vespa scooters!!!
I have been searching for Vespa models for so long and finally found it at HuaHo Dept. It's dirt cheap too for $7.50. Immediately bought two different types and now it is sitting nicely on my shelf. For your information, Vespa is from Italy! Yeap from the country that bring you Ferrari and Lamborghini. I always wanted to ride a bike, apparently I do not have a license and I do not know how to ride it either. Maybe when I am older, planning to get a Harley Davidson....bad ass bike!
1/5 Yoko & Ganbee
My new additional Yoko collection, 1/5 Yoko & Ganbee from Movic. This is by far my favorite Yoko collection ever partly because of that cool bike she is sitting on it. I tried to take her out from her plastic but got lazy after that. LOL. Somemore she was well packed so I didn't want to ruin it. My wife told me the boobs of Yoko in this version are identical shape to papaya. Hahaha.
Healed
At the end of last summer, Boy in Black had to stop playing Ultimate Frisbee – a sport he loves passionately – because of an injury that was diagnosed as a pulled groin. Rest was supposed to heal him, but it didn’t. All winter, Boy in Black went for repeated doctor visits and several rounds of physical therapy. Every time he got a new diagnosis, he’d come home and look up information on the internet. Then he’d go back to the doctors to ask why they hadn’t done this test or that test. (“That kid ought to be in med school,” our family doctor said to me.)
He had an MRI. He had X-rays. He had to keep fighting the insurance company that didn’t want to pay for physical therapy or expensive tests. He took antibiotics at one point with the theory that perhaps an infection was involved. An orthopedic doctor diagnosed the injury as osteitis pubis, an inflamed pubic bone, and sent him for a bone scan that involved him taking radioactive isotopes. But the bone scan came back negative. Four doctors, two physical therapists, and multiple tests could not pinpoint the problem.
Nothing helped. Boy in Black ended up sitting out of Ultimate for his whole junior year of college. He still went to every practice to support his teammates from the sidelines but he simply couldn’t play.
It was difficult to see how down he was. He didn’t complain much – he knew full well what a privileged life he still had, even with the injury. But he spent an awfully lot of time just lying on the couch, watching youtube clips of Ultimate tournaments on his laptop. He still practiced his throws constantly and talked about Ultimate non-stop. He convinced all his siblings and most of our extras to sign up to play on a Summer League team – and said he’d be willing to be captain of the team even if he couldn’t play.
He would hold family meetings to brainstorm ways to solve the problem. “What kind of expert haven’t I seen yet? Should I make an appointment with a urologist?” We spent most of the winter talking about his groin. The serious talk was mixed in with a constant sprinkling of jokes about his "junk." Whenever Boy in Black would come home, I’d look up and say, “How’s your groin today?” All of us – family, extras, his teammates – wanted desperately for him to heal.
Then an older player in the Snowstorm City League recommended his physical therapist. “Your insurance won’t pay for it, but go to him anyhow. He’s really good at figuring things out.”
Smart Physical Therapist listened carefully to his story – and then measured his legs. One seemed to be a little longer than the other. “It’s your SI joint,” the therapist said. “That’s causing the problem.”
“This is going to hurt,” he warned, and then yanked hard on his right leg until Boy in Black could hear it pop.
And that, pretty much, was it. In five minutes, the physical therapist diagnosed and cured an injury that had plagued him for nine months. A few days later, Boy in Black was playing Ultimate again.
He still had some pain and some inflammation so he took it easy at first, but he’s played a little more each week. Last week, he went to a tournament in Country to the North, and he played hard. He’s not 100 percent yet, and he's still going to physical therapy, but he’s healing. He’s looking forward to being back to full strength for his senior year with his college team, a group of guys who elected him to be a captain of the team even when he couldn’t play.
The best part is that he’s so damned happy. It’s great to see him smile again.
The photo was taken by Sunshine, one of his teammates. Ironically, Boy in Black is the kid in the photo wearing the white shirt. He only gets to wear black half the time at a tournament.
He had an MRI. He had X-rays. He had to keep fighting the insurance company that didn’t want to pay for physical therapy or expensive tests. He took antibiotics at one point with the theory that perhaps an infection was involved. An orthopedic doctor diagnosed the injury as osteitis pubis, an inflamed pubic bone, and sent him for a bone scan that involved him taking radioactive isotopes. But the bone scan came back negative. Four doctors, two physical therapists, and multiple tests could not pinpoint the problem.
Nothing helped. Boy in Black ended up sitting out of Ultimate for his whole junior year of college. He still went to every practice to support his teammates from the sidelines but he simply couldn’t play.
It was difficult to see how down he was. He didn’t complain much – he knew full well what a privileged life he still had, even with the injury. But he spent an awfully lot of time just lying on the couch, watching youtube clips of Ultimate tournaments on his laptop. He still practiced his throws constantly and talked about Ultimate non-stop. He convinced all his siblings and most of our extras to sign up to play on a Summer League team – and said he’d be willing to be captain of the team even if he couldn’t play.
He would hold family meetings to brainstorm ways to solve the problem. “What kind of expert haven’t I seen yet? Should I make an appointment with a urologist?” We spent most of the winter talking about his groin. The serious talk was mixed in with a constant sprinkling of jokes about his "junk." Whenever Boy in Black would come home, I’d look up and say, “How’s your groin today?” All of us – family, extras, his teammates – wanted desperately for him to heal.
Then an older player in the Snowstorm City League recommended his physical therapist. “Your insurance won’t pay for it, but go to him anyhow. He’s really good at figuring things out.”
Smart Physical Therapist listened carefully to his story – and then measured his legs. One seemed to be a little longer than the other. “It’s your SI joint,” the therapist said. “That’s causing the problem.”
“This is going to hurt,” he warned, and then yanked hard on his right leg until Boy in Black could hear it pop.
And that, pretty much, was it. In five minutes, the physical therapist diagnosed and cured an injury that had plagued him for nine months. A few days later, Boy in Black was playing Ultimate again.
He still had some pain and some inflammation so he took it easy at first, but he’s played a little more each week. Last week, he went to a tournament in Country to the North, and he played hard. He’s not 100 percent yet, and he's still going to physical therapy, but he’s healing. He’s looking forward to being back to full strength for his senior year with his college team, a group of guys who elected him to be a captain of the team even when he couldn’t play.
The best part is that he’s so damned happy. It’s great to see him smile again.
The photo was taken by Sunshine, one of his teammates. Ironically, Boy in Black is the kid in the photo wearing the white shirt. He only gets to wear black half the time at a tournament.
Eminem goes in on Mariah Carey & Nick Cannon (THE WARNING)
Eminem drops new track "The Warning" dissing Mariah Carey
Follow My Blogs!!
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Peace*Love&Spaceships
© Illyus Prophet 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
adios queens
Dear Queens,
It's been a great 2 years and 2 months. We've been through so much together: living above Cracker, the crazy man who never stopped walking the streets, McGuinness's after closing hours (love you Gary), bad pizza after bad pizza, awesome sushi, Nita's, the Colombian bakery, love for the 7, THE METS, hating the R train, Starbucks in Astoria and Sunnyside, Berry Lover, the murder-plex movie theatre, the evil lure of gypsy cabs, and much much more. After all this, I'm gonna miss you. But sometimes you gotta go big or go home, and I'm going to Kings County.
Love,
Me
Quick escape
Other families don’t seem to have this problem, but my household is hard on screen windows. About half of ours are missing. Some were damaged in the early days when I practiced fire drills with my kids, which meant everyone hurriedly pushing out screens to jump out windows. Screens have taken hard use in the name of science as well: I think every one of my kids has done the seventh grade project in which you need to design a parachute that will safely land an egg on the ground.
Part of the problem is that I’m careless with the screen windows. I’m always taking them out to take a photo or throw something out the window, and I end up dropping them. Mostly, though, the fault lies with the screen windows for being poorly made. If seventh graders can design a parachute that will land an egg safely, surely someone could design a screen window that would survive an occasional drop from a second-floor window.
I never think about the missing screen windows until our first heat wave, when the air inside the house resembles a sauna, but only half our windows can be opened to let in the cool night air. Well, we could just open the windows regardless if we wanted to be mauled by swarms of mosquitoes. The good part about all those missing screen windows is that it’s easy to climb in and out of the house.
That’s Shaggy Hair Boy in the photo.
Wale Interview w/ S.A.B Radio Part 1 & 2
Wale Interview - Part 1
Wale Interview - Part 2
Follow My Blogs!!
Find me on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/Illyus
Myspace - www.ILLPROPHETMUSIC.com
Twitter - www.twitter.com/ILLPROPHET
Peace*Love&Spaceships
© Illyus Prophet 2009
Wale Interview - Part 2
Follow My Blogs!!
Find me on Facebook @ www.facebook.com/Illyus
Myspace - www.ILLPROPHETMUSIC.com
Twitter - www.twitter.com/ILLPROPHET
Peace*Love&Spaceships
© Illyus Prophet 2009
On the Bog
I'm not sure if I need to clarify this for my North American readers (apologies if you already use this word) but here in the UK one of the euphemisms we have for the toilet is "the bog". Where this comes from I wouldn't like to speculate. Well, actually I would. For what it's worth I'm thinking that our ancestors denuded our forests thousands of years ago, effectively turning many of them into bogs. Ergo, we didn't go into the woods to take a dump, we went into the bog. Makes sense, non?
Where am I going with this, I hear you ask. Let me answer...I received a letter today from the Shetlands Islands Council. They have chosen two of my poems, Within Reach and Eisenhower's Mother for their Bards in the Bog project.
The poems will be posted in toilets around Shetland for the next three months, and on the Shetland Library website. For a wee look go to www.shetland-library.gov.uk.
How cool is that? Spend a penny (another euphemism - this time for taking a piss. We Brits love to discuss our bodily functions, but only in the most inoffensive of ways) and you get to read my poems. Beats reading a shitty tabloid. See what I did there?
And no, the "poem" above is not one of mine.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
After the facebook info
On most summer nights there are five or six laptop computers in my living room — accompanied by the lanky bodies of teenage boys. Boy in Black’s summer job is doing research for a physics professor, which means he gets paid to sit on on the couch and write computer programs on his laptop. My daughter does freelance work on her computer, I write on my computer, and my husband checks the stock market online. Mostly, everyone else looks up youtube clips, plays computer games, and checks email.
Yesterday, when we were all sitting around the living room, which is mostly what we do here in the summer, Shaggy Hair Boy reached for one of the laptop computers on the coffeetable and checked his email. “Hey, I got my roommate.” He’ll be heading to Snowstorm University in less than a month.
“Go to facebook,” Quick said.
Within minutes, the roommate’s profile was up on every computer screen in the room. We looked at photos of him — hanging out with his friends, rowing crew, or in his cap and gown at graduation. We read messages his friends had left on his wall. We looked at his list of favorite music, his favorite movies, his favorite television shows.
Later that evening, Shaggy Hair Boy said, “Hey, Roommate left a message on my wall.”
“Write him back,” said my daughter.
“What should I say to him?”
“Ask him where he’s from.”
“We know that — he’s from State Where They Grow Oranges.”
“Ask him what instrument he plays.”
“We know that — there’s a photo of him with a trumpet.”
“Ask him what music he likes.”
“We know that — here’s a list.”
Quick looked over at Shaggy Hair Boy. “Online social networking has really killed small talk, hasn’t it?”
Yesterday, when we were all sitting around the living room, which is mostly what we do here in the summer, Shaggy Hair Boy reached for one of the laptop computers on the coffeetable and checked his email. “Hey, I got my roommate.” He’ll be heading to Snowstorm University in less than a month.
“Go to facebook,” Quick said.
Within minutes, the roommate’s profile was up on every computer screen in the room. We looked at photos of him — hanging out with his friends, rowing crew, or in his cap and gown at graduation. We read messages his friends had left on his wall. We looked at his list of favorite music, his favorite movies, his favorite television shows.
Later that evening, Shaggy Hair Boy said, “Hey, Roommate left a message on my wall.”
“Write him back,” said my daughter.
“What should I say to him?”
“Ask him where he’s from.”
“We know that — he’s from State Where They Grow Oranges.”
“Ask him what instrument he plays.”
“We know that — there’s a photo of him with a trumpet.”
“Ask him what music he likes.”
“We know that — here’s a list.”
Quick looked over at Shaggy Hair Boy. “Online social networking has really killed small talk, hasn’t it?”
Fujiko from Lupin III - Prison Breaker Ver.
My second Fujiko from Banpresto. This time she is in her convict uniform. She stands quite tall, I would say around 25cm tall. For that price I am paying she is a bargain. The quality is the usual Banpresto quality.
I would say this is the weirdest packaging ever from Banpresto
Poor Fujiko need to be "attached" - *wink*wink*
Fujiko giving you the stare
Coloring is just right
Handcuff looks kinda kinky
Yeap that is how tall she is
Even Shakespeare Failed
After my last project, I needed to renew my mind and soul. So I’m reading Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of The Human. I’m now 300 pages into this 700-page book, and my cup already runneth over. It’s deep analysis of characters, some of the greatest in all of literature, and the genius of Shakespeare unfolding before me play by play. I’ve added Bloom’s book to my sidebar, and I daresay, this should be required reading for every writer. His book will forever alter your perspective, and perhaps even approach to, characters.
In a recent article on Kurosawa, I suggested that no other filmmaker has created more masterpieces. So out of 30 films he made, how many would you say are masterpieces? 10? 15, perhaps? Consider that Shakespeare wrote 39 plays and critics agree that about two dozen or so are masterpieces. So the answer to the question, “Why are you reading about Shakespeare?” can only be, “Who else is there?”
I’m no expert on Shakespeare. The book was enlightening for me in many ways - like how Shakespeare was for so long under the shadow, influence, and popularity of Christopher Marlowe; how so many early plays were imitation Marlowe; and how Shakespeare struggled to get out from under that influence to find a fresh approach and his own unique voice, which took time. Genius never happens overnight.
His were characters of depth, both good and bad, very little of this “sympathetic protagonist with a goal” crap (and he luckily didn’t have gurus who would’ve limited his genius with narrow-thinking ideas about stories). Shakespeare is storytelling unlimited, unhindered, and undiluted. It's bottomless depth. It’s characters, story, and lots of poetry. Fascinating, too, that Shakespeare was pointedly ambiguous about many subjects and had so many characters with so many differing points of view, that it’s difficult to nail down who the scribe really was and what he truly thought. It’s staggering not just the sheer volume of characters but how his greatest characters like Rosalind, Falstaff, and Hamlet, differ so distinctly from one another.
But Shakespeare failed. Oh, how he failed. He failed because he hadn’t mastered his craft yet in his youth. He failed because he experimented. He failed because he took short cuts. He failed because he was lazy at times. He failed because… that happens to every writer. On The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Bloom wrote: Never popular, whether in Shakespeare’s time or our own, the Two Gentlemen might merit dismissal were it not partly rescued by the clown Launce, who leaps into life, and Launce’s dog, Crab, who has more personality than anyone else in the play except Launce himself.
Toward the end of the play, one of the two “Gentlemen” tries to rape a girl named Silvia, just as the other “Gentleman” interrupts and the two reconcile from a previous conflict. Bloom writes: …poor Silvia never utters another word in the play after she cries out ‘O Heaven!’ when the lustful Proteus seizes her to commence his intended rape. What is the actress playing Silvia to do with herself during the final hundred lines of The Two Gentlemen of Verona? She ought to whack Valentine with the nearest loose chunk of wood, but that would not knock any sense into the lummox or into anyone else in this madness…
Of Richard III, Bloom says:
…this Richard has no inwardness, and when Shakespeare attempts to imbue him with an anxious inner self, on the eve of his fatal battle, the result is poetic bathos and dramatic disaster. Starting up out of bad dreams, Richard suddenly does not seem to be Richard, and Shakespeare scarcely knows how to represent the change:
Give me another horse! Bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Jesu! – Soft, I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue; it is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by;
Richard love Richard, that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am!
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why,
Lest I revenge? What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O no, alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain – yet I lie, I am not!
Fool, of thyself speak well! Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain:
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all us’d in each degree,
Thron to the bar, crying all ‘Guilty, guilty!’
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die, no soul will pity me –
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder’d
Came to my tent, and every one did threat
Tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard.
I cannot think of another passage, even in the tedious clamor of much of the Henry VI plays, in which Shakespeare is so inept. Soon enough, the playwright of Richard III would transcend Marlowe, but here the urge to modify from speaking cartoon to psychic inwardness finds no art to accommodate the passage…
On Julius Caesar, Bloom questions why Shakespeare didn't exploit the father-son relationship between Julius Caesar and Brutus:
Brutus is an unfinished character because Shakespeare exploits the ambiguity of the Caesar-Brutus relationship without in any way citing what may be its most crucial strand. Julius Caesar has an implicit interest as a study in what shades upon patricide, but Shakespeare declines to dramatize this implicit burden in the consciousness of Brutus.
On Titus Andronicus:
…I can concede no intrinsic value to Titus Andronicus. It matters only because Shakespeare, alas, undoubtedly wrote it, and by doing so largely purged Marlowe and Kyd from his imagination… Titus Andronicus performed an essential function for Shakespeare, but cannot do very much for the rest of us.
All of this tough criticism for the greatest writer who ever lived. The weak plays were necessary stepping stones to achieve the masterpieces. And baby, Bloom’s enthusiasm for the masterpieces is so infectious. I love all the great moments Bloom shares from the plays, like this portion from The Taming of the Shrew:
From this moment on, Kate firmly rules while endlessly protesting her obedience to the delighted Petruchio, a marvelous Shakespearean reversal of Petruchio’s earlier strategy of proclaiming Kate’s mildness even as she raged on. There is no more charming a scene of married love in all Shakespeare than this little vignette on a street in Padua:
Kath: Husband, let’s follow, to see the end of this ado.
Pet: First kiss me, Kate, and we will.
Kath: What, in the midst of the street?
Pet: What, art thou ashamed of me?
Kath: No, sir, God forbid; but ashamed to kiss.
Pet: Why, then, let’s home again. Come, sirrah, let’s away.
Kath: Nay, I will give thee a kiss. Now pray thee, love, stay.
Pet: Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate. Better once than never, for never too late.
One would have to be tone deaf (or ideologically crazed) not to hear in this subtly exquisite music of marriage at its happiest. I myself always begin teaching the Shrew with this passage, because it is a powerful antidote to all received nonsense, old and new, concerning this play...
I loved what he said about Mercutio’s death in Romeo and Juliet. This passage follows Mercutio’s “a plague on both your houses” speech:
That indeed is what in his death Mercutio becomes, a plague upon both Romeo of the Montagues and Juliet of the Capulets, since henceforward the tragedy speeds on to its final double catastrophe. Shakespeare is already Shakespeare in his subtle patterning, although rather overlyrical still in his style. The two fatal figures in the play are its two liveliest comics, Mercutio and the Nurse. Mercutio’s aggressivity has prepared the destruction of love, though there is no negative impulse in Mercutio, who dies by the tragic irony that Romeo’s intervention in the duel with Tybalt is prompted by love for Juliet, a relationship of which Mercutio is totally unaware. Mercutio is victimized by what is most central to the play, and yet he dies without knowing what Romeo and Juliet is all about: the tragedy of authentic romantic love. For Mercutio, that is nonsense: love is an open arse and a poperin pear. To die as love’s martyr, as it were, when you do not believe in the religion of love, and do not even know what you are dying for, is a grotesque irony that foreshadows the dreadful ironies that will destroy Juliet and Romeo alike as the play concludes.
And when Bloom gets going on his favorite characters, like Rosalind in As You Like It, get ready for a feast of insights.
…Rosalind, least ideological of all dramatic characters, surpasses every other woman in literature in what we could call “intelligibility.” You never get far by terming her a “pastoral heroine” or a “Romantic comedian”: her mind is too large, her spirit too free, to so confine her. She is as immensely superior to everyone else in her play as are Falstaff and Hamlet in theirs... To be in love, and yet to see and feel the absurdity of it, one needs to go to school with Rosalind. She instructs us in the miracle of being a harmonious consciousness that is also able to accommodate the reality of another self. Shelley heroically thought that the secret of love was a complete going-out from our own nature into the nature of another; Rosalind sensibly regards that as madness. She is neither High Romantic nor a Platonist: love’s illusions, for her are quite distinct from the reality of maids knowing that “the sky changes when they are wives.” One might venture that Rosalind as an analyst of “love” is akin to Falstaff as an analyst of “honor” – that is to say, of the whole baggage of state power, political intrigue, mock chivalry, and open warfare. The difference is that Rosalind herself is joyously in love and criticizes love from within its realm; Falstaff devastates the pretensions of power, but always from its periphery, and knowing throughout that he will lose Hal to the realities of power. Rosalind’s wit is triumphant yet always measured to its object, while Falstaff’s irreverent mockery is victorious but pragmatically unable to save him from rejection. Both are educational geniuses, and yet Rosalind is Jane Austen to Falstaff’s Samuel Johnson; Rosalind is the apotheosis of persuasion, while Falstaff ultimately conveys the vanity of human wishes.
Bangladesh capital sees biggest rain in 53 years
Yes, the monsoon has arrived in Bangladesh....with a vengeance.
The heaviest rain in 53 years battered Bangladesh’s capital Tuesday, leaving at least six people dead and stranding thousands in their swamped homes.
Streets waist-deep in water caused huge traffic snarls in the city of 10 million people.
Heavy monsoon rains have battered Bangladesh's capital, flooding streets and homes, stranding thousands and forcing businesses and schools to close.
The national weather office said more than 333mm of rain had been recorded in Dhaka on Tuesday in the past 12 hours.
Luckily, James and Jess are not currently in Dhaka, but further out in Joypara. and thankfully, got a message to me on Facebook today that they are fine there. The Dhaka residents are not so lucky, and the suburb where James and Jess are due to move to soon is waist deep in water. with all power shut off to reduce the electrocutions from the low slung power lines!
This has happened before in Bangladesh, regularly.
But I do worry about the people,
the children
the animals
and the lack of shelter and risk of disease due to lack of clean drinking water.
Christchurch suddenly feels a pretty good place to live :)
You can also read more about life in Bangladesh with James and Jess
Bangladesh capital sees biggest rain in 53 years
Yes, the monsoon has arrived in Bangladesh....with a vengeance.
The heaviest rain in 53 years battered Bangladesh’s capital Tuesday, leaving at least six people dead and stranding thousands in their swamped homes.
Streets waist-deep in water caused huge traffic snarls in the city of 10 million people.
Heavy monsoon rains have battered Bangladesh's capital, flooding streets and homes, stranding thousands and forcing businesses and schools to close.
The national weather office said more than 333mm of rain had been recorded in Dhaka on Tuesday in the past 12 hours.
Luckily, James and Jess are not currently in Dhaka, but further out in Joypara. and thankfully, got a message to me on Facebook today that they are fine there. The Dhaka residents are not so lucky, and the suburb where James and Jess are due to move to soon is waist deep in water. with all power shut off to reduce the electrocutions from the low slung power lines!
This has happened before in Bangladesh, regularly.
But I do worry about the people,
the children
the animals
and the lack of shelter and risk of disease due to lack of clean drinking water.
Christchurch suddenly feels a pretty good place to live :)
You can also read more about life in Bangladesh with James and Jess
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