July's Links to Love

Artsy:

A touching ad that won't embed.

Design Sponge's best of stairways.

Animator vs. animation.

Jeff Nishinaka paper art. Wow!

I think my mom cried during this "So You Think You Can Dance."

Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair--it's huge) creativity:

This lady poses her baby during her naps as if she knew what the baby is dreaming about.

Way too much work for a couch. Why not just build your own, seriously?

Painting elephants:



Design your own textile.

Music:

I love the trend of having popular musicians play with orchestras. (I just went to Ben Folds with the Utah Symphony, which was awesome.) Here's an example (Josh Ritter with the Minnesota symphony):




Weeping ukelele:

Lovely talent:

I don't remember if I ever posted this lovely video/song (I hope they got all those bouncy balls cleaned up):




Mormon:

Video on forgiveness:




Jane Austen fight club (made by Mormons, anyway):




Yes, I Love Technology:

Maiden flight of the first solar-powered plane.

A driverless, solar-powered car race from Rome to Shanghai.

I'm addicted to this word game.

Literary:

Did you hear about the debate about Kafka's papers?

Best magazine articles ever.

I think I'm going to write a letter to a punctuation mark.

A dating website where you're lined up by the books you like.

Writers' houses.

Which famous writer do you write like? (My first try said I write like Cory Doctorow, a Canadian science fiction novelist. I wonder if I would like reading someone who writes like I do. The second said I write like William Gibson, another Canadian science fiction novelist. Weird pattern. I wonder if it'll hold up.)

Random:

100 Best Movie Insults (sorry for the plethora of offensive words):



I always knew it was better to leave your bed unmade. (There's really no point.)

"America: there's a better way. It's called Germany."

Don't argue with ibexes. They'll only make weird sounds and blow snot at you!:

10 movie characters based on real people.

A Malaysian reality show is looking for an imam. Weird. I am soooo glad that we don't choose prophets that way.

Girl successfully (judged by her admittance to Harvard) home schooled by her truck-driver mom . . . in the truck.

The weirdest helmets ever.

A website for mothers to line up their single kids. Wow. The look on the kid's face shows that his opinion is a lot like mine.

Micro-currencies in Germany?

The Old Spice Guy on libraries.

BYU Old Spice Guy spoof. Hilarious.

Have the Old Spice Guy on your answering machine!

Missing EFY

I'm really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really sad about not being accepted to be a counselor at EFY this year. At least jensi posted a whole bunch of EFY videos on YouTube that can cheer me up a little. You can see me dancing--I'm the one with the green hair ribbon to match my shirt--see Mom, I don't dance off on my own in the corner anymore. (Now if I could just remember how to do the whole dance--guess I've got to do some YouTube studying.)

Love, Purity, and Strength

I wrote this post about ten billion years ago. Though I love Casey O'Connell's artwork, after I had looked at this picture for a while, I started analyzing it and this is what I thought. I guess you could say there is some bitterness and pain in there, but there's also the realization that in the end, a pure heart is a strength not to be underestimated.

Casey O'Connell's "Wish You Were Here"

Look how she has forgotten the crazy distractions of life that surround her. How she is holding on to him for dear life. How she cherishes him and has smothered him with kisses. See how she has dressed up cute and brushed her hair for him.

But she's got her eyes closed. She doesn't realize that he's distracted. That he's looking elsewhere.

Shame on her, society would say. She should have known someone who would wear jail stripe shirts was a con artist and not worth breaking her heart over. She should have known that men get distracted in such a colorful environment. She should have had her eyes open. But she thought she did.


It's one thing to experience a break-up where you can say that you at least both had a great time while it lasted, but it's a completely different thing to realize that you were never loved all along. That you were used. That you fell for it. That your conscious decision to love no matter what made you one of those women you'd always criticized--the women who are abused by their boyfriends or husbands but who still want to be with them.

Shame on him, I say. Shame on him for purposely deceiving, for acting the ideal but for hiding what good is in him. Shame on him for hurting the pure in heart. Or trying to. Because when he picked the pure in heart to hurt, what he didn't realize is how strong that purity makes one; in the end, despite his indifference to reproach, he is really just hurting his own soul.

Because she--she walked towards the light.

Christmas Memories in July

Some classics from Christmas 2009.

Vacuuming Sadie:



Mom and Heidi Duet:



Cozy Christmas Home:

The Two/Five/Ten/Twenty Second Rule

Ha ha ha.

Leonid Afremov

I love the colors and the chunks of colors. I wish I could paint like this.



Google his name in Google images and you will be amazed.

Letting Off Balloons

You know what? Lots of people think it's all cutesy to let off balloons. But I consider it littering. You are spreading garbage all over the place, and it seriously can't be healthy for animals to get all entangled in the strings or rubber. Can't we find something a little more nature-friendly to celebrate?

Then I googled the subject and found a really helpful site with these replacement ideas (they also have some awful examples of what balloons can do to animals):

Plant a tree

Create a wildlife garden that will attract butterflies and birds

Blow bubbles (I don't necessarily agree with this one. Soap can also be bad.)

DROP balloons (non-helium filled) from a tall building. Watch people have fun kicking and playing with the balloons. Then, pop them and dispose of correctly.

Release balloons INSIDE a church, gym or ballroom.

Memorial service -- Give everyone a balloon and a sewing pin, and tell them to make a wish for their loved one. On the count of three -- everyone bursts their balloons, sending wishes to heaven.

Cancer-free celebrations -- Give everyone a balloon, a pin and a marking pen. Tell them to write on the balloon the number of years they have been cancer-free. On the count of three -- everyone bursts their balloons. Messages on small pieces of paper can be inserted into each balloon with an inspirational message.

Outdoor Sporting events -- use bands, lights, banners, singers, crowd give-a-ways (towels, noise makers, etc.) to build excitement, but don't release balloons!

Donate books to a local library, food to a local food bank, or pet food to a local animal shelter to celebrate your group's acheivement or to honor a loved one.

And my own idea:

Distribute addressed post cards (with stamps) to random mail boxes and see what comes back! You could write, "Soandso just graduated!" or "Soandso and Soandso2 just got married!" so that the resulting message will be appropriate for the celebration.

Yeah. So let's do something about it.

Palm Reading

A friend of mine was telling me how she had her palm read many years ago and was amazed at how accurate it was. I don't believe much in things like that, but I googled palm reading and was interested to find that my palms say the following about me (or at least, that's what I think, it was hard to know what is considered "long" or "wavy" or "broken"):

• Smaller lines crossing through heart line - emotional trauma
• Long and curvy heart line - freely expresses emotions and feelings
• Curved, sloping head line - creativity
• Donuts or cross in head line - emotional crisis/broken head line - inconsistencies in thought/multiple crosses through head line - momentous decisions
• Break in life line - sudden change in lifestyle
• Life line swoops around in a semicircle - strength and enthusiasm/curvy - plenty of energy/long, deep - vitality
• Breaks in fate line - prone to many changes in life from external forces
• Fire - square or rectangular palm, flushed or pink skin, and shorter fingers; length of the palm greater than length of fingers: spontaneous, enthusiastic and optimistic; sometimes egoistic, impulsive and insensitive; extroverted; does things boldly and instinctively

Hmm. Do you think my palm is an accurate picture of me? What do your palms say about you?

Need More Passport Pages?

Just a heads up to anyone needing more passport pages:

Right now it's free to add more visa pages to your US passport, but starting Tuesday (July 13) it's going to cost $82 to have them added! So if you're getting low on pages, hurry and have them added before then! You can do it by mail (should arrive at the consulate before July 13 to be safe) or by going right to the consulate in person on Monday.

Found here.

Boys Will Be Girls and Girls Will Be Boys Humor

From Harvard Sailing Team, a humor group in New York.

Helen

A few weeks ago, I saw Helen, a 2009 film with Ashley Judd. (I couldn't find a rating online, but we just fast forwarded the parts that looked questionable.) The main character is a woman haunted by Depression.



The movie left me feeling sad and very thoughtful. Why do all these stories of people with Depression have to be of people who at least have a partner or spouse or child? The one girl in the movie who doesn't have anyone seems to be the strongest, but in the end she is the one who doesn't survive.

Anyway, good for a view if you like serious movies.

Ja Deutschland!

I love the 2010 World Cup song and can't hear it enough (oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!):





Good luck to Germany against Spain tomorrow!

Wall Collage

A work of art is never finished. But I don't think I'm personally going to add anything to the wall anymore. This collage of mine is enormous.



It was a great thing to spice up a white room for free (besides the cost of the tape) and it's something you can never stop looking at.

Home

This is how I feel sometimes. It's a torn feeling, like the place I have in my mind cannot be real, cannot exist and I should just settle. Maybe I will first feel like I've found home in the next life. Maybe I'll feel it when I marry. Who knows?























Found here.

"Was mir wirklich fehlt, das ist ein Stück Heimat, ein Stück Himmel, ein Haus, ein Dorf, eine Straße, wo man wirklich hineingehört, wo man jedes Mauerloch und jeden Grashalm im Blut hat und in den Eingeweiden, die Luft und das Gurren der Tauben, die Küchendüfte, das Menschengeschnatter. Du lieber Himmel. Ich hab das alles gehabt und es verlassen. Ich war zu jung, zu verliebt, um den Verlust zu erfassen. Zu spät. Dieser Sommer hat es mir gezeigt. Man wächst sich auseinander. Nicht nur das Haus und die Stadt, auch die Menschen sind mir entrückt, ich erreiche sie nicht mehr, obwohl ich sie, die Stadt und das Haus im Blut hab. Was uns in der Kindheit prägt, verläßt uns nie. -- Und hier, da werde ich wohl nie dazugehören, ich spüre das." -Maxie Wander, Tagebücher und briefe, s. 177

Team Spirit

So, I feel a little bit like an idiot.

I saw this guy on ads all over the place here in Leipzig, and I thought, "Ugh. Why do they use that guy? Is no one else around who can be in an ad?" In every single ad, he could only make one face, and that face didn't please me that much.

And then, in the frenzy of the World Cup, I was reading a newspaper article about the players who wouldn't be able to play with the German team because they'd been injured. I felt bad for them, especially for Michael Ballack, the team captain, who everyone said was purposely injured by Boateng so he wouldn't be able to compete.

Then I looked closer at the picture of Ballack. Oh. Pretty sure it was the same guy as in all the ads I'd seen. That's why they chose him. The German football team captain. Oops.




Well anyway, go Germany!