I Heart Cool Stuff

I was getting ready to go to bed, but I couldn’t resist spreading the goodness that is Woolloo. I’m cutting her name short because I’m always paranoid I’m misspelling it, you never know, I could miss an L or an O, or some other letter. =) Anyway, I logged on to my flickr account and was also looking through my I Heart Toys rss feeds and came across Woolloo’s posts. Please look below as I have copied and pasted her exact words [also, please help and proceed to her photo's through the link located below]. She deserves an awesomeness award!!

as many of you have read/watched on the news, southern california has been battling with the largest wildfire for more than a week now…many have lost their homes and some lives were lost in the fire as well…

i was looking into weekend volunteering work to help out when i found out that they do have more than enough volunteers right now, but what they need is monetary donations to help rebuild lives for those who lost their homes. after making my own donation to the red cross, i decided to donate some of my designer toys here and shamelessly ask for your help and donations to the red cross.

here is how i hope it works…

1. i’ve posted all the toys i’m donating for you to adopt in this set.. they are all from my own personal collection and i do take very good care of my toys, so they’re all in excellent condition. ^^

2. please flickrmail me which toy you wish to adopt, and you will make your donations directly through the red cross website (please click/specify it’s for the “california wildfire funds” on the donation page) …donation amount will be the appx price i paid for the toy, and of course, any extra amount of donations are always deeply appreciated and welcomed ^^

3. please forward me the donation email confirmation that you would receive directly from redcross (which will show the donated amount) and i will send out the toy to you on my own expense. (sorry i can only send via regular mail, since priority or express shipping will add up and will be too much for me :p)

- and for those who are not interested in designer toys, and don’t mind my amateur knitting skills, i’m also donating handknitted scarves… these are all newly handknitted by me this past week before my bedtime, which is usually around/past midnight, so there might be some imperfections. all scarves are mixed yarns of acrylic and wool, and it took me about 3 hours to handknit each piece (yes, i’m a slow knitter :p) i welcome whatever reasonable amount of red cross donation you’re comfortable to give for my scarves. (i currently have four listed, but if i’m lucky to have all four adopted, i’ll knit/list more if anyone is interested..since i do handknit to donate on an on-going basis)

** i only have one each of what i listed here available for adoption, so please flickrmail me and get a confirmation from me (and i’ll mark your choice of item as “on hold”/”adopted”) before you make donations, so i can make sure i have the item available to send you. ^^

thank you soooo much for reading this far, and i hope this is not against flickr policy. i apology in advance if what i’m asking is unreasonable and/or will offend anyone.

thank you so very much for keeping all the families, brave firefighters, volunteers, animals and trees who have been affected directly or indirectly by this massive wildfire in your thoughts and prayers. *the biggest huggies* to you, my dear friends… xoxoxo… ^^

Help the cause [Woolloo's Flickr]

I wanted to let the readers know… I added a calendar to my site. Actually I added both a calendar and a calendar rss feed, that’s how much I care about ya. =)

I need to fix the rss feed a little, but I wanted to sort of give you the update and a very short explanation to why I did such thing. I’m noticing that as of lately, I’ve tried my very best to make as many shows (within the vinyl scene) as possible. On that same note, as soon as I get home or to my Mr.’s home I rush over to my laptop and begin uploading pictures and start writing my impressions of the show. The last shows I’ve attended, I’ve tried to inform you (the readers) of the locations to give you the chance to attend, but I don’t always get around to writing about it. Thanks to Google Calendar and their wonderful simplicity, if I can’t write about an upcoming event at least you’ll know about it because I would’ve added it to the calendar. So, you can check out the calendar page, tab is located above, or you can subscribe to the rss and recieve the updates there. It’s still getting tweaked, but I hope it helps us ALL attend more shows and share the goodness.

Finally, if you’ve got any suggestions or inside scoops, feel free to email. I don’t know if you noticed but there is a contact tab at the top, feel free to email me.

[image from: metatron 1050's flickr]

[John, if you're reading, I was going to borrow your image, but you had yours all protected. haha]

I believe it was in August, I went to my very first vinyl toy show ever. I didn’t know any of the artists that were there and I was almost completely embarrassed, but I somehow managed to fend for myself and was able to identify: Keith Poon, Julie West, Huck Gee, Andrew Bell, and later realized the handful of other artists that were there. Though I went to the show blindly I proceeded to look up my favorite artists, just in case something else came up I’d be able to identify them. A while later Sket had his opening at My Plastic Heart, and them being my favorite dealers of this vinyl addiction, I made it to his show and finally got up close and personal with him. I was completely star-struck!! I couldn’t help it. Thankfully I had my Mr. with me and Vincent (MPH owner) helped introduce me to all the artists that were there. Sket became my very first sketch, which was super awesome, and since then I’ve made it a mission to collect artist’s souls.

Anyway, this weekend has been rather awesome in that department. I’ve been sick, which always sucks booty! I guess I was lucky enough to get sick during the weekend instead of letting it effect me both in school and work during the week. Anyway, staying indoors most of the weekend allowed me the opportunity to exchange emails with Dacosta Bayley. I am very grateful to a mutual friend in the scene, it was through his mentioning of my name that I was able to talk to him in the first place. I can’t help but continue to feel like such a star-struck groupie (no SEX involved people- get your minds out the gutter). I look forward to meeting Dacosta and in the meantime, I shall leave you a link to his site and an image of his DCTO (Dreams Come True Object). It’s quite exciting when I meet new people and especially exciting when they’re such talented individuals [by this I don't mean to suggest that meeting people in general isn't special]. Yay for me.

[Chocolate Soop]

p.s. I believe you need flash in order for the site to load. Also check out the audio, I think its pretty dope that he has a song from Samurai Champloo, I ♥ that anime a lot.

I was told about a canvas art show that would take place in SHQ. Since I live in the city, I tend to go to these events and more often than not I don’t do any research before I show up. I can’t help it. I showed up to SHQ and didn’t know the person who was in charge of the show, I believe I walked up to the owner of the place and asked if she knew any of the artists, she responded with, “this is my show”. It’s a good thing I didn’t ask if she worked there. She seemed quite cool and once she told me the names of the few artists that were there, I proceeded to check out the pieces on the walls. The entire collection started with Sket’s piece (image below). The show also contained a couple of other works from people I knew, and so I took pictures of those pieces too.

Like I said, I’ve never been to SHQ, and until today probably wouldn’t have known they existed had it not been for this 3rd year anniversary party. As soon as I got home I looked up their website, which didn’t contain much, but I did find the following excerpt:

Among high style concept boutiques that present T-shirts and sneakers as high art, Sugarhead Quarters is a simple, artful respite. Hanging out on a few racks and a few steel tables are a impressive collection of T-shirts from smallish designers in Europe, America and Japan. Cool toys, accessories and other arty randomness are lounging about. A rotating collection of artwork hangs on the wall.

Maybe I should keep this place in mind. I am a very big fan of both Sket and MAD and if there’s a possibility they’ll provide me with the goods, than I better keep them on my list. I’ll be back tomorrow to post more thoughts… right now I’ve managed to get a cold. Damn this weather! Anyone up for making me soup?

p.s. I changed the font on my photo watermark, how do you like in comparison to the previous one?

Like most things on this blog, I’ve managed to wait for the last minute to report to the people on the interweb. This might come of very short notice if you reside in the New York City area, but on Thursday October 25th at 10am, the Madison Square Garden post office will finally reveal and have the new Yoda stamps available for purchase, in a book of 20 of course. Funny enough, I went to pick up my Star Wars and Marvel Comic book heroes stamps too. This reminded me of the news. The MSG post office also said that they would especially love it if people came dressed as characters from the movie, as the event is so close to Halloween. I tried to find a link on their site, but was unable to find one, so you’re going to have to take my word on it. Check it out and take pictures, if I wasn’t required to work I’d be going. Hit the jump to check out the Star Wars book of stamps I got today.

(more…)

I swear I really do love NOTCOT.org/com; they’re an awesome site. I’m not sure who owns it and whether its multiple writers or just one. Someday I will ask for more information about who and how they run that awesome site. A while back I wrote about this billboard that uses the sun’s shadow to represent how the glaciers melting are making the ocean levels rise. I don’t think I made any sense there. Anyway, moving on. Here is another WWF advertisement, and I really do love the way they provoke you to think. They make us feel responsible and I hope in turn makes us create some change.

Sources| [NOTCOT.com] and [I Believe in Advertising]

Rating:

I am late on this, I’ve been late on lots of things haven’t I? This week Beautiful Katamari was released for the 360, and OMG I am so happy! I haven’t been able to play a game for a while, I haven’t even been able to charge my DS- I miss carrying it around the city and letting it bring me lots of joy. So you can imagine how delighted I was to be able to sit this weekend, though only for half an hour, and play the game. I love it even though I was getting frustrated, but that’s all me. I missed rolling up katamaris and re-building the universe. Hahaha… Anyway, if you loved the previous versions, then you’re going to love this one, if you didn’t, then you’re not going to like. It retails for $40, so pick it up if you get a chance.

[image from blik site]

Hmm… I’m not a designer- though I’d like to think that all those house-flipping shows I watch make me an honorary designers, but clearly this isn’t the case. Designer shows have definitely helped me understand where to start when it comes to decorating my own home, someday I hope to put these hours of TV watching to good use. One of the things I’ve had in mind since I started college at Adelphi University was the idea of displaying my favorite quote on the wall. I wanted people to walk into my dorm room and immediately get a sense of who I am, by the authors I chose to quote. So, I was ecstatic to find out that Blik is now creating wall decals with your favorite quotes on it! I can’t tell you a price because it all depends on your custom order. Go to their site [whatisBlik] and write the quote you want printed along with the size and other details, and like magic, they mail it out.

So last night was your last chance to comment for some tokidoki goodies. Well, out of thirty-something comments that people left, thanks to Grim sending word to toys r evil blogger, we have our winners. I want to clarify though how we came about getting our winners. I wanted Grim to pick a random number between 1 and 38 I believe is the total number, and I would then do the same and that’s how we would get our winners and that would also mean we didn’t give preference to people we recognized. Then, technology made it even better, we used a random number generator and got out winners like that instead. Woo hoo!

So the winners are:

John Wong

and

Mamus

I have emailed them for their mailing addresses and soon they will have their goodies. I’m truly sorry I didn’t have enough stickers for everyone, but please stop by again as this has inspired me to hold lots more goody giveaways. I focus mainly on vinyls, so that’s what I’d be giving away if anything. Mkay! Again, thank you!

I was visiting le swissmiss‘ blog and ran into this post. OMG! I should share before you read that whomever this person is, is a genius! I don’t know why I myself didn’t think of it before. See, I have OCD, and there are rituals that I must do [especially with food] in order to feel like the world is in order. Does that make sense? Anyway, whenever I eat gummy bears, I must eat pairs of same color bears. Or, with Reeses Pieces I must eat two of the same color too. Well, mainly I need to eat in pairs. But with M&M’s, I do the same thing as this man [woman?]. I take two and have a duel between them. I’ve never sent them out, and no one ever notices, because I’m nuts as it is. hahaha… anyway read and enjoy…

Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the “loser,” and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3×5 card reading, “Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.”

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this “grant money.” I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

Souces| [kitsunenoir] & [craigslist]