Picture #12: "What?" or "I read Jesus a bedtime story."

I don't really have a problem with people of faith, I'm just a big fan of science. Facts. Truth. Justice. The American Way. And so on.

My response to responses to the response to Asians in the Library by UCLA girl Alexandra Wallace.

Pictures #9-11 or "I appear to have taken on a photo project..."

Upon discovering Daily Booth, I immediately liked the low-maintenance nature of it all. There's no real tagging, or categorization of photos, it's just people uploading whatever they want and if you happen to catch something interesting on the live stream, then it's a happy little accident rather than the result of a carefully targeted metatagging/keyword/spam bot campaign.

I also immediately found myself posting photos and now seem to have gotten into a rhythm of wanting to do one a day. I stumbled into a theme of taking pictures with the toys scattered about the house, and have now inadvertently given myself a daily photo assignment.

This is great for me - my creative and work ethic muscles are extremely atrophied, if not entirely dead - and I need something simple and consistent to slowly get them back into shape. So, I'm hoping taking a picture and writing a caption every day will be like walking a mile every evening, or doing sun salutation every morning. Theoretically, it should start to feed into my other projects and kick-start them as well.

Picture #11: "The lap dance from the Invisible Woman was quickly turning out to be a colossal waste of money."

Taking this picture (and writing this blog posting) are a good reminder of the dangers of taking on a daily photo project like this - for I'm doing this as procrastination from editing and posting a video for YouTube I shot yesterday. Still, it makes me chuckle, so, well worth it!

Picture #10: "Put me in coach!"

I actually took this shot the night before I posted it, at the Gotham Girls Roller Derby season opener up at CCNY. Originally I had hoped to take a shot of the Mark V next to the feet of a bunch of derby girls' roller skates, but that opportunity never quite materialized.

Picture #9: "Big Biiirrrrdddddd!!!!"

A friend of mine expressed confusion over this caption. I'm not sure I understand why - clearly Mecha Godzilla is about to devour Big Bird and his little friend. This clock, by the way, is probably one of the single most thoughtful gifts ever given to me, by my ex-girl and current close friend Wendy. She once heard me talking about this alarm clock I had as a child, went to various vintage toy shops and FOUND it, and gave it to me for Christmas or my birthday. Amazing.

Picture # 8: "Tetsuo! Kaneda!"

I hear they're making a live-action version of this anime classic. I imagine it will look something like this.

Picture #7: "I mistakenly purchased 'Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark - Home Edition.'"

I originally purchased this web-shooter kit before Spiderman 2 came out. I had a sketch idea where I'd go into Times Square in a Venom outfit, walk up to the guy in the Spiderman outfit who hangs out there for tourist photos, facing off against him for a moment, and then just emptying the silly string "web fluid" all over him, then running away.

I'm on Daily Booth!

In lieu of putting actual work into making videos, I've decided to procrastinate by joining DailyBooth. Because the excuses that I make for myself to avoid making videos are rather ineffective when it comes to taking a single photograph of myself a daily.

But go ahead and come follow me and see if I can manage to keep up the pace. http://www.dailybooth.com/shyaporn

Biggest Loser - Geography Fail

I have more than a few guilty television pleasures and The Biggest Loser is one of them. On the one hand, I like to think it's one of the more constructive members of the trash-filled reality continuum, as it promotes exercise and thoughtful eating habits as a means to getting healthier, but on the other hand... it's really not.

And allow me to preface this by saying I realize reality television shows are heavily edited and staged in order to create a compelling narrative for the viewer; I have friends who work in reality TV and have heard all the stories. But there was a glaring bit of complete BS in this week's episode that held special meaning to me.

The episode featured a contestant who lives in Queens. She is shown complaining about having no place to run around her neighborhood due to traffic, streets, etc... She then goes into a subway station (Astoria Blvd station) to go to Central Park so that she has someplace to run.


Here's the thing: I live in Astoria. I use that train stop. Now, on LITERALLY the same street as that station, is a running track, a few blocks down in Astoria Park. A park which also features a beautiful water front that you can run along. I run there all the time.

In fact, from that train station, you can RUN ACROSS THE BRIDGE to Randolph's Island, through a lovely park there, and then over another bridge to Manhattan, where you can then RUN to... CENTRAL PARK.

So, I call FAIL here Biggest Loser. Get a map.

How to Make Chocolate Lava Cake (with Cayenne and Sea Salt)

I just made this instructional for my birthday (March 1). I've been wanting to do a cooking video for a long time - had no idea how long it was going to take. I was up until 9am, thus ensuring that I'd sleep through the majority of my actual birthday. Me am smart brain.

I often make this recipe for people; it's always more fun to cook when there's a guest(s) involved. I certainly use Thanksgiving as an excuse to feed my friends and family. And I've always enjoyed going to the market with people for ingredients and then cooking together afterwards.

So get to know me and you'll eventually get some of this hot, chocolate, lava, cake action.

UPDATE: Whoo, hoo! I made it onto the Craftzine Blog! http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/03/how-to_chocolate_lava_cake.html