Here's my first attempt at pixel art:

To clear up interpretation, little mario is flashing the hang loose sign while holding a plunger with a turd on top.  (notice the yellow corn pixel)

Here's my second attempt:

(Not the most fitting subject for pixel art, though I do wish Studio Ghibli would've make some Ghibli adventure games)

I'm a child of the 80's so these cheesy retro blocky images still hold a certain nostalgic fondness for me.  Video games and computer games were a major staple for wasting time back in the day.  I mostly have my oldest brother to thank (or blame) for getting all these great games.  The systems I played on were Atari 2600, NES, Genesis, and the arcades.  Combat, Mario, Sonic were great.  I also played on the Apple IIe, 286, 386 computers.  I loved Sierra and Lucasfilm adventure games.  After the days in the mid 90's, I didn't game too much.  High School and College sucked up too much time.  These days, I still feed off my brothers' systems rather than having my own.  The latest generation of game systems have been increasingly interesting however.  Especially the Wii.  Though I doubt I can enjoy them like the same mindless enthusiasm as in my youth.  Nothing will beat the games of that era.  The electronic games of the eighties should live on in all their pixellated glory forever.

James Mar: (secrets)

This illustration makes me feel gross.  But I'm the one who drew it!  It's a little out of context too.  I drew it as a joke.  Anyway, I colored it in photoshop to test out some brushes and be a little looser around the lines.

Yes, I do like some girly or shojo anime but not all.  I blame Disney and Studio Ghibli for getting me receptive to these character gender protagonists.  I'm not into super girly junk like Sailor Moon  where they have all these soap opera romances.  Nor do I care for brainless cutesy fantasy stuff like My Little Pony.  Can't stand that sort of stuff.  Sometimes I feel like female protagonists are better candidates for acting drama as they can more prone to easily draw out their emotions and such.  Boy protagonists may be better suited for action or comedy.  Maybe I'm just stereotyping. 

Actually, the shows and movies I have hovering around me in my illustration are stories I like more because of the drama or comedy in them.
 
Heidi and Anne of Green Gables are wonderful realist dramas based on literary classics of the same name.  Part of Nippon Animation's World Masterpiece Theater, they were directed by Isao Takahata and includes work by animators Hayao Miyazaki and Yoshifumi Kondo.

Later on, Isao Takahata went on to direct among others Chie the Brat and Only Yesterday.  Chie the Brat is a fun comedy/drama.  Only Yesterday is a great coming of age drama as well.

Hayao Miyazaki has directed many movies featuring female protagonists like Kiki's Delivery Service.  That's another good coming of age drama.

Yoshifumi Kondo is the director of Whisper of the Heart.  It's sort of a coming of age drama too, with romantic undertones, but it's not trashy.

Maybe I'm just biased towards Studio Ghibli anime.  After all, I'm tepidly receptive to the live action movie of Anne of Green Gables.  But I do like other animes.  I've only seen a few English translations of Sakura Momoko's TV series Chibi Maruko Chan but what I have seen have been very funny and at times heartwarming. 

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a movie with stupid comedy, cheesy romance, dorky sci fi, but good drama.  The director, Mamoru Hosoda must be either really talented or really lucky.

So actually the qualities that attract me to these shows were the realist qualities, good comedy and great drama.  Kid protagonists can be fun to watch too.  I wish American animated shows would dare to have more realist-toned content. 

Between now and my last entry, there's some exciting "highlights" that happened.

I found a fat black widow in my backyard.

So then I smashed it till it's butt exploded.

It crawled around for a bit but then settled down.

Then as luck would have it, I found another fat black widow.

Not her lucky day.


I also finished drawing my graphic comic book. (currently trying to find an agent or publisher)


And had my birthday.  I'm only as old as I think I am.
First, I was in the 70's.  Next day I was:

And the next day I was:

I''ve always been a slow thinker.

(this entry if full of gross reactions so don't read it if you're sensitive to that sort of stuff)

 About a year ago, I discovered something quite dastardly about kiwi fruit quite by accident.  A few hours after eating this furry fruit, I experienced hours of stomach pains followed by  several trips of unadulterated liquid diarrhea.  It just made me feel sick for a while.  This event was very puzzling when it first occurred as I've eaten the fruit before and nothing like this has ever happened.  I suspected it was the kiwi but my mom was kind of skeptical. 

So some days or months later, my mom decided to serve me the fruit again, not wanting to have me lose out on it's nutritional value of Vitamin C.  I was curious to see if it would happen too, so I went ahead and ate it.  The same thing happened.  Stomach pains, itchy skin, diarrhea all night.  Horrible experience.  By now, I was guessing it was a food allergy. 

My mom must've still been skeptical as some days or months later she wanted me to try it again.  I must've been really stupid as I was thinking: "yeah, I want to see if it happens again too!"  So I go and eat it.  Hours of stomach pains, diarrhea, itchy skin. 

And just yesterday, my mom bought some golden kiwi and wanted me to eat it.  I was like "It's kiwi.  You know what happens when I eat it."  And my mom's like "oh that was just regular kiwi, but this is different, it's GOLDEN kiwi."  I must be even dumber because I went ahead and ate it.  To finally prove to my mom and myself I'm allergic.  AND to golden kiwi too.  Since it happened so recently, I can describe this experience more vividly.  Immediately after I ate it, I as sweating.  A few minutes later, I could already feel lumps in my throat and chest area.  I was definitely feeling uncomfortable.  Sometime later I already forget which came first the itchiness or the stomach pains, but this time in particular, the itchy skin was pretty bad.  I had redness and hive welts all over my body.  My fingers were even slightly swollen.  It was like wearing a wool sweater over your bare skin, only worse.  And it didn't let up until I diarrheaed... two or three times.  But what made this one special in particular was I ended up throwing up golden kiwi.  It feels better after the vomits and diarrhea.  And in the morning, all the itchiness was gone and I was feeling 99%.  I don't get sick very often and if I could come away with something from this experience it's being reminded how horrible it feels to be sick or in that state.  There was nothing I could really do to get myself back into a comfortable state, except vomit and diarrhea.  I just had to wait for the symptoms to go away, which didn't happen til the next morning.   It's a bad place to be and I don't know how real sick people could deal with it day after day. 

I've mentioned one of my kiwi reactions to my doctor before, asking him about why I'm getting this reaction now and wanting an allergy test, but he sideswiped my inquiries and just said "don't eat kiwi".

So, after experiencing this several times, without any medical tests to support it, I think I can say, I guess I'm allergic to kiwi.  I also think my mom's finally convinced there's a correlation...  after all, she did recently suggest I eat smaller portions of it to build up my "immunity" to it...  Maybe she's just trying to get back at me for stressing her out for all these years.


Reminder to self: the taste of barf = warm, acidic.  Goes through the nostrils too!

Here's an interesting article I read in the LA Times:

Why do Asian students generally get higher marks than Latinos?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lincoln16-2008jul16,0,3712530.story
In summary, the article examines the students of Lincoln High School who come from various parts of Boyle Heights, El Sereno and Chinatown.  Both the neighborhood and student body are about 15% Asian. And yet Asians make up 50% of students taking Advanced Placement classes. Lincoln Heights is mostly a working-class Mexican American area, but many are ethnic Chinese who fled Vietnam. 

The difference isn't in class economics, 84% of the Asian and Latino families in the neighborhoods around Lincoln High have median annual household incomes below $50,000.  The difference is most Asian families value and stress the importance of education while more Mexicans value and stress getting paid work sooner than later. 

---

I know the situation.  College was expected in my family.  I wasn't a straight A student, but I would've gotten worse if I didn't work it.  Then again, my district was tougher.  In the end, I earned a respectable academic performance.

This is why I believe whenever a school, political candidate, or the government insists on pouring more money into schools to theoretically make students better, that theory is a bunch of crock.  It's mainly the student's responsibility to value their own education, study harder, and get good grades.  The parents are also to blame for not regulating.  Hard study ethic is all that's needed.  Sure, better teachers help but they can only do so much.  Buying new textbooks or shiny computers or paying teachers higher salaries is not going to make students smarter.

All those other supposedly "dumber" minorities need to quit whining and get over their cultural laziness and study.  Once they do that, they too, can break through the invisible racial barrier and do the impossible like Carlos Garcia, the Mexican president of Lincoln High's Asian club, did.


Carlos Garcia, second from right, is the ethnically confused President of Lincoln High's supposedly Asian club.