crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i'm going to blame....*spins the wheel-o-blame"...my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna's year-end photo recollection, but that's turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i'll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it's already halfway thru january...time just continues to fly right by.



JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost...welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece's rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it's a win-win situation.  a concern we're having at the moment however is, given her older sister's astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this...but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we've postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don't know what was left for josie.  i know...feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i'm very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it's a social activity that involves everything i love...eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they'd never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning...it was super.

and hmm...yea, i didn't do shit this past weekend.  doh!

2010 sounds so futuristic...oooh.  spacepacks and robotic servants.  well, i still haven't gotten my spacepack in the mail, but i did get a roomba.  that thing is all kinds of awesome.

i meant to post a bit earlier, but it was a relatively dull and uninteresting holiday.  avatar in 3d imax on christmas eve with max and patsy, then minca ramen with fonz the following tuesday, and then up in the air with sally and nicky on saturday.  all days in-between were spent either 1. staring at my ceiling, 2. watching anime, 3. playing wow online, or 4. staring at my roomba trying to get out of my living room.  awesomeness.

and as a secondary excuse, i meant to post earlier, but i was also waiting to get pictures of my new niece, who was born yesterday.  bro-in-law is seriously slacking on the facebook front. post, damnit!  god knows my sis is in no shape to post.  i know...she told me herself that they don't have wifi in the hospital (the horror!).  anyhoo, so this is a post to tide myself over until i can post real pics of my new niece...who's name isn't even 100% set in stone yet.  hmph...

these spam comments i've been getting lately have been making me wonder just what is a real comment and what isn't.  they're usually vague comments that have somewhat of a connection to the topic, but they're otherwise nonsensical and may reference things that don't even relate to the entry.  at this point i'm also pretty glad i upgraded mt...otherwise i would've had alot of spam scrubbing to do.

i'm wondering at this point whether that cowboy bebop commenter is even real.  if you're reading this btw, feel free to comment again.  otherwise i'm deep-sixing that comment and link at the end of the week.

mmm...gotta love the smell of progress.  it sometimes smells eerily like massive failure.  that doesn't mean it doesn't make for a fascinating watch though.  the largest mall in the world...the south china mall in dongguan, china, is twice the size of the mall of america, and is currently 99% empty.  yet it still operates because it was deemed too big to abandon (no shitting).  it must suck to work there.  via gizmodo

oh fuck, forget about iron man 2 and clash of the titans.  hot tub time machine word.  via gizmodo

the entirety of the known universe, as mapped out for the hayden planetarium.  it puts in perspective our place in existence...which is to say, we are a speck in this universe.  via gizmodo.

mmm...it's a good day for new trailers. 

the brand-spanky new trailer for iron man 2 is out, and so is the second trailer for the upcoming remake of clash of the titans.  very sweet x2.  release the kraken!

both via aicn...

a day in the life of...

he-man art at gallery 1988 in los angeles.  come to nyc!  via io9.