This is a screenshot from the opening of TRIGUN (created by Yasuhiro Nightow) and is one of the very few pictures where you can sort of see all of his coat. There are better ones, but I don't know how to capture screenshots for myself, so I have to work with what I have.
Don't let it eat you!
I have discovered the secret to making expresso at home.
Step 1: Make coffee regularly
Step 2: Go to class and forget to turn off coffee pot
Step 3: Return from class 3 hours later and think, “Awesome! Coffee!”
Step 4: Make coffee as you do regularly.
Step 5: O.O
Step 6: Add more sugar so you can drink it. LOTS more sugar.
Note, this method requires a coffee pot that does not have an automatic 20 minute turn off built in to it.
Seriously though, I'm just sort of glad that my coffee pot didn't break or catch fire while I was out or something. That would have been bad. I don't make coffee that often, so about half the time I forget to turn it off. Last time it happened I had made hot water for tea and then left the pot on all night. I have to tell you, getting the water scale of that pot was real fun. NOT. Hopefully, I will learn to check the pot before I go out of the room before my negligence burns down the building.
In acquiescence to Ms. Hickner's request, I shall include a visual.
The person in the foreground (Ed from Cowboy Bebop, an anime produced by Sunrise), pretty much has the expression I wore when I tasted that coffee. That was some kind of wake up call, lemmie tell you. Moral of the story, think before you drink. (no pun intended)
I went to church this past Saturday for the first time in a couple weeks. I usually try to go every week, but circumstances have been conspiring against me. So anyway, as usual, the service was absolutely amazing. This church is much closer to what I think a church should be than the one I go to back home. Church is a place for people to worship together and to encourage each other in the faith. My church back home has become closer to a bible study of sorts rather than exhortation and encouragement. I think that I have grown more in my faith from going to this church for a few weeks more than I have going to my old church for the past several years.
Anyway, this Sunday was communion Sunday. The way that this church practices communion really opened my eyes to what it may have been like to be present at the last supper and makes me feel much closer to the spirit of communion. At my old church, communion was accomplished by the decons passing around the plate of little bread-like wafers and little cups of juice. The pastor would say some words about the significance of communion and then we would eat them. The only reason that communion had any meaning to me was because once, when I passed the plate to a family member, they just passed it on. I asked them why later and they told me that since they couldn't let go of their anger at someone, they weren't able to partake in communion because they had sin in their heart. But communion at this church that I attend now is much different. The pastor said his words about the communion and then he and his assistant held a platter with bread and a cup of grape juice at the front of the church. Everyone lined up and took turns breaking off a piece of bread and dipping it in the grape juice, then eating it. This ritual had so much more meaning for me. Not only did the actual bread give me more of a connection to the first communion at the last supper, but I experience a much greater connection to the church community. It felt like the communion of a community, rather than an individual thing.
My church is on Grant St. It has a steeple, it is pretty hard to miss. Sunday service begins at 11 and they usually have donut holes, fruit and juice in the anteroom for you to snack on a bit before and after service. I invite you all to come.
The prompt:
Choose one of the Adbusters spoof ads in the "food" category and write an analysis of the ad. First, describe the ad visually. Next, explain what the ad is referencing and how it is spoofing the referenced work. Finally, provide your own response: how successful is the spoof? Why does/doesn't it work? Write a minimum of 200 words. [If possible, include an image showing an example of the kind of original ad that is being spoofed.]
The response:
A woman who looks to be in her 20s maybe early 30s stands smiling and with good posture, one hand on her hip and the other holding what looks like a glass of milk. A milk mustache coats her upper lip. Her light blue sweater both offsets her from the medium gray background and coordinates with it. A caption next to her head reads, “WHY MILK? Try soy instead.” This caption leads us to believe that it is a glass of soy milk and a soy milk mustache that she accessorizes with. A paragraph at the bottom of the page says, “I was raised to believe that milk was part of a healthy diet. Then I discovered that to increase production, many dairy companies inject cows with hormones and antibiotics that we end up drinking. And that cows are kept “artificially” pregnant so they'll produce milk all year long. So I scraped my milk mustache for a soy one. It's healthier for me AND the cows.”
Unlike many adds that are text heavy, this one is rather effective. The reference to the famous, “GOT MILK?” campaign leads a reader to investigate what the add is about. The cool colors are restful to the eye and so it attracts the eye from the bright white or colors of many magazine pages. This add is endorsing soy milk instead of real milk as a healthier product.
When I read this add, I got really mad. (no rhyme intended) I like milk. Natural milk is one of nature's most perfect foods because it contains many of the things your body needs, such as amino acids and lipids, to name a couple. That the capitalist thirst for money is adding crap like hormones to our milk, even unintentionally makes me angry. I'm not going to stop drinking milk because, as I said earlier, I like it, but I may have to research the different companies that produce milk. It may become a little extra on my budget each month to get better milk instead of the cheaper milk. It's not like all milk isn't already about 4 bucks a gallon anyway, not that I'm bitter... I already buy butter instead of margarine anyway.
Give me Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, My Chemical Romance, the Gorillas, Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, Avril Lavigne, Eminem, or even the popular music channel. But for the love of all that is my ears, DO NOT play the “musicals no one has ever heard of” station while I'm cleaning up at work. Why would someone even INVENT that channel?! It was terrible! Everyone at work was like, “what is playing on the radio? Put something else on... anything!” I remember one of the lyrics from a song that played was “Praise God and pass the ammunition!” I was like O.o it was really creepy. Even musicals that people have heard of are weird to hear on the radio. The songs just don't sound the same when taken out of the visual context. Some time I wish that they would put on the classical radio station. I can just imagine cleaning the salad bar or dish to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. That is the first classical song I ever heard, by the way. It is the very first song in Disney's Fantasia. Arguably the best movie to ever be produced by them. Fantasia 2 was ok, but Fantasia was just made of awesome. I watched that movie quite a lot as a child, and I would watch it here too, but I don't have a VHS player.
