Funny: my mom said that she wanted to start writing a "Blarg" today. :D

Also, I did this painting for Ash and Courtney's wedding gift and thought you might like to see it:

I got to see Yellowcard on Monday with Gieve, Jacob, and Josh over at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. Dang, did we have a great time. The Catalyst is a very cool little dive with a lot of character and history. Not a very big venue, either. The opening bands were Reeve Oliver (they weren't so hot live, but they sound good recorded), and Acceptance (not bad, but their set went too long). Yellowcard did a great set, played for like an hour and a half, and did the best flippin' job I've yet seen of getting the crowd really pumped up. Being there reminded me of my childhood days in mosh pits and at the Warped Tour. :)

I also saw "Walk the Line" on Wednesday, and really liked it. It's got some obvious similarities to "Ray," but it's definitely its own film. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon both do a fantastic job, the music is great (I couldn't believe how well both of the actors sang), and the story is involving and interesting. Definitely Oscar nominee material.

I just got home very, very early this morning from Ash and Courtney's wedding. I had a fast paced and fun filled week, but I am so tired right now that I can hardly even type.

I got to Pepperdine on Tuesday, and right away we hit up the old haunts - mongolian bbq and volcano tea. Wednesday was the "bachelor party," which consisted of us spending the whole day at Magic Mountain. The X was such a fun ride, though we had to wait in line for like 3 hours for that one. We took Ash out to Claim Jumper's next, and then smoked cigars out on the Malibu Pier that night. That was a lot of fun; really chill. I spent Thanksgiving Day with Tony and Ryan at Ryan's family's home. It was great to finally meet his parents and brothers - they were totally awesome people.

Friday morning, we got up early and drove to Tulare for the wedding rehearsal. The rehearsal dinner was at this cool little restaurant called The Depot, and it was this remodeled train depot. Really great food, too. That night, we went back to the home we were staying at and stayed up late playing Mafia and poker.

We woke up late on Saturday and headed over to the church. The place was decorated beautifully with white lace and red roses. The ceremony was brief, touching, and even funny (at the end, Ash and Courtney ran out of the chapel to the tune of "Now I'm a Believer," as sung by the donkey from Shrek).

The reception was a whole lot of fun, and Ash's brother, Heath, gave a very funny and moving toast. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends from Pepperdine.

Sumeet rode back up with me as far as San Jose, which was a great blessing since I was already pretty tired. I think I had too much coffee at the reception, 'cause on the drive back home from San Jose I was all jittery and tweaking out. Not fun. :/

So it's great to be back, but that was a heck of a week. Congrats to Ash and Courtney!

Spent a greater part of yesterday and today working on some art for a women's retreat brochure. It's been really fun to get back into drawing lately.

Almost done reading The Kite Runner, and I absolutely recommend it.

I've been listening almost obsessively to Cartel's "Chroma." Very catchy pop rock.

Has anyone seen "Good night and good luck" yet? It looks good.

Halloween weekend was fun. Marc's birthday party was on Friday, then there was the high school / college group party at our place on Saturday, and that was nuts. I've never seen so many people in our house before. Thanks to everyone that made that possible! Haha! A really good magician performed for us, too; he's a graduate from Berean as I understand. Sunday was Marc's baptism, which was awesome, and then a whole ton of Mafia. Halloween itself was pretty dull for me. Supposed to help out with a middle school party at the church office, but no one showed up, which was actually a relief for all of us I think. :)

Working on getting a new freelance client down in socal, and sending off more job apps, this time to a design firm in Seattle, World Vision, and Pepperdine. Pray for me! :D

Just saw "Serenity" this afternoon, and it blew my friggin' mind! I had heard before of the TV show it's based on, "Firefly," but never got around to seeing it before it was prematurely cancelled.

The movie and TV series is really best described as a Sci-fi western. It's written and directed by Joss Whedon, the mind behind Buffy and Angel. Even if you didn't like those two series (I only saw a few episodes of Buffy ever, and didn't care for it much), let me assure you that "Serenity" is amazingly interesting, well written, funny, action packed, and touching. It builds real characters that you will immediately have a passionate response to one way or the other.

"Serenity" is how the Star Wars prequels should have been.

To clarify, you need not have ever seen a single episode of "Firefly" to appreciate this movie. Like I said, I still haven't seen "Firefly," although I *did* just order the DVD boxed set... :D

You really have to see this movie!

Feeling kind of sad and frustrated about the world today.

This article did little to help. It's a really interesting article about MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games), and how the future is likely to unfold. The author sketches a pretty convincing road map of how our world will end up with something like the Matrix or Metaverse as a reality. I obviously don't agree with his ultimate conclusion that this will be for the better, but I actually can't tell if he's kidding or not. :)

This Wednesday I just got back from a 10 day mission trip in Belize, Central America. (It used to be called British Honduras, and it borders Guatemala, if that helps.) Our team was 25 people from Clayton Community Church, and we worked and stayed at an orphanage in Ontario, Cayo.

One week after we got there, our team was out for some R&R getting some ice cream, and then afterwards we went to a bridge over a river that's supposed to be fun to jump off of. The team that went to Belize from our church last year had a blast doing it. But what happened to us was that one of the first kids that jumped off the bridge dove head first and hit his head hard on something under the water. When he surface, he was floating face down in the water, and couldn't move. He was rushed to a hospital in Belize City, and it turned out that he shattered his C5 vertebrae, and fractured his C3. His name is Spencer, and he's 20. He's one of church's worship team musicians, and a really awesome guy.

Spencer was airlifted from Belize to UCSF on Tuesday, August 2nd, and had a second round of surgery that day. He's currently recovering, but at present can't feel or move any part of his body below his shoulders. My family visited him in the hospital today, and his spirits are high, he can talk fine, but still no movement or feeling.

If you pray, please, now is the time! We're praying and hoping hard for a miracle here. God has big plans for Spencer's life, and he's already been such an amazing witness through this whole thing. When he was first pulled out of the river, though he was screaming in pain, he was also yelling out praises to Jesus. Pretty amazing.

Thanks, everyone, and I'll keep you posted.

This is a neat flash cartoon if you're either into fine art or tripping on acid: Kunstbar

This is hilarious: a forum of Woman Against WoW.


EDIT: They removed the thread for some reason! Boo!

Here are some long-anticipated pics from graduation!

This CNN article says that people who are constantly distracted by e-mails, instant messages, and the like suffer more of a temporary IQ damage than people that smoke pot do.

Before:

After:

I felt it just needed a dose of honesty. :)

Here's a service you can purchase if you don't have the time to play your own video games: leveling.

As some of you know, I was home schooled as a child, all the way up to my freshman year of high school. I've been thinking a lot about the whole idea of home schooling lately, and I saw this news bit last week about how more and more people are choosing home school as an alternative to our abysmal public school system (particularly here in California).

One of the biggest concerns many have with this trend, I think, is the potential negative impact that it may have on the poor. Obviously, one can't be home schooled if there isn't anyone at home to be the teacher, so low income, single parent households would find it hard or impossible to home school a child. The problem is that in many cases, children that are taught in a home school environment actually tend to do better in college than those that attended public or private schools. So some say that it "looks good" on a college application if one was home schooled. Where does that leave the already disadvantaged inner city students?

Even more importantly, it doesn't seem that this trend is helping public schools, especially in the area of funding. Instead of trying to make public schools better, many perceive that parents that choose home school for their children are effectively "jumping ship," turning a blind eye to the very serious problem of public education in our country, dismissing it as "someone else's problem."

On a personal note, I'm very glad that I was home schooled, especially during my early, formative years. I went into high school with a very solid idea of my beliefs and values, and who I was and was not. I also excelled in public high school, and whether that was due to my home schooling or simply to a genetic or spiritual disposition is up for debate, but I can't help but think that home school had a lot to do with it.

I was taught to be very self-motivated, and many of my studies, especially in middle school, were greatly self-directed. This value of self-motivation is one that I hear many home schooled students talk about, and it also felt to me that it was somewhat lacking from the general public student body. I know that I got a lot more out of my years of college because of the fact that I had learned the value and joy of learning.

So what's the verdict? Personally, I think that home schooling, along with plenty of social peer interaction and extracurricular activities, is the ideal. But the reality is that we simply cannot abandon public schools, leaving them only for those who can't afford private school, or who don't have the resources or time for home school. All I know is that I have a lot of thinking to do if I am ever blessed with children. In the meantime, I think it is my duty to do what I can to help better our public schools.

Any thoughts?

Peace out.

This is way cool: http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

It's a really intuitive method of fishing through all the pictures on Flickr.

I just finished watching "The Notebook," and I am embarassed to say that it was so good. I'm questioning my manhood right now. ;)

I'm gone for a week on a mission trip in mexico. Pray for our group, please!

This is beyond hilarious. It's a training video of Iranian police women.

What is it with girls and French?

This is the ultimate computer accessory.

On a more serious note, here are some heartbreaking pictures of children that survived the Chernobyl incident.