Seeing this awesome image in the Boing Boing article “Spreading the Word About New Anime Through Cosplay“:
…made me want to check how many other cool cosplay pics there are out there for Durarara!! So I did. And Flickr, as always, delivers 
It’s really nice to see that Drrr!! was well-represented at this year’s cons!
According to Spoon & Tamago, peace signs (or “the peesu” ) is going out of fashion in Japan and photographees are starting to favor a generic thumbs up instead.
…Definitely a bit of a bummer if that’s true, but I’d imagine that it would take quite a loooong while for the rest of Asia to phase out the infamous peesu.
Reading the Spoon & Tamago post definitely raised a more interesting question though: WHY do Asians like peacing out in photos so much? A bit of googling yielded this post from Stuff Asian People Like on the peace sign:
To show that they are indeed happy, asians outline their grinning chins with a “V” sign to draw attention away from their non-existant eyes. They also wouldn’t ever want to yell something while taking a picture because it would draw more attention to them. However, Asians are always stoked when a photo opp arises. In these situations, asians, instead of using America’s ludicrously awkward phrase, “Cheese,” will use the peace sign to show that they are indeed present in the photograph.
Not at all sure if I agree with that as an Asian, but since I don’t have any better explanations for this mysterious phenomenon, I shall leave the peesu to future ponderings…
Sadly I haven’t been keeping up with the World Cup, mostly because it’s not showing on cable in our apartment. Uber lame, I know. But I still got a huge kick out of Paul the (Oracle) Octopus, who has been splashing across major news sites like BBC News, Boston Globe, and Forbes for his 100% prediction rate for Germany so far.
And here’s a video of the actual moment of prophecy haha -
Does anyone else get a kick out of the idea of a mollusk prophet who can commune with the soccer gods?
P.S. ZOMG Germany beat England 4-1! AM SRSLY IN LOVE WITH THE OCTOPUS NOW YES I AM
Because Twitter’s iconic Fail Whale is love, this comic strip by aksrnk is a terrific addition to the trove of Fail Whale tributes!
From Gigazine: “Missed You…Twitter’s Fail Whale Welcomes Home Hayabusa Asteroid Explorer“
I was incredibly jealous when I saw these on Tim Maughan’s blog. Not only because these Ponyo cupcakes look fantastic, but also because his girlfriend made these scrumptious delights for him.
I’ve tried hooking my long-time boyfriend onto anime by starting him with a couple of my favorites – the Cowboy Bebop movie, Millennium Actress, and I may have also tried a Ghibli movie with him too. None of these worked, so I’m resigned to being the open-closet otaku in this relationship. We’ll camp out on the couch to watch Bones or Australia’s Greatest Athlete, but any anime will have to be watched on my spare time (and usually when he’s not around). Certainly I won’t be getting any cool Ponyo cupcakes from HIM anytime soon, sigh…
I’m a bit of a sucker for Mario videos, despite the fact that I’ve never actually played Super Mario past the first two stages – being incredibly jumping-impaired probably had something to do with it. But there’s just something so comforting and nostalgic about the franchise, which is why this YouTube video put a big smile on my face. The video was also just incredibly well done!
“A post-it stop-motion of Super Mario running wild in a school building, created by a group of Japanese students, is fast becoming a YouTube hit!”
From Gigazine: “Super Mario Stop-Motion: School is the Stage for Post-It Mario“
Is this epic? Why yes, yes it is:
Cast by a dude for an art (sculpture) class, this is possibly one of the best homework assignments ever made by a kindred nerd.
P.S. Am rather amused by all the “I WANTS THAT” comments resounding through the internets, mostly because the artist shared that the katamari ball is heavy enough to cause some serious damage to wood if it was to fall over (apparently the katamari is NOT welded to the Prince; a design decision that I applaud). Since the bronze for the sculpture alone costs $200, this is really out of my price range. But still, I DO wants. Maybe mass production would be the answer here…
From BoingBoing: “Image: Katamari’s Prince, bronz’d“
Oh Japan, why are you so oddly random yet creative and awesome?
“The star-shaped new eraser Milli-Keshi is designed for those who want millimetre-precision to erase exactly one letter or one row on their writing pad, with five “hands” of different width to accommodate the ruling.”
From Gigazine: “Kokuyo’s Milli-Keshi Eraser to Erase with Millimetre Precision“
I’m pretty proud of my noodle slurping skills. As an Asian, I feel absolutely no shame in (loudly) sucking in a scrumptious mouthful of noodles, small accompanying sprays of soup not withstanding.
But with that said, this is a pretty cool invention and I wouldn’t mind trying it out, even though I still think the best bowl of noodles is one that is loudly and messily slurped
Rock on Japan (and MoMA)!
From Topless Robot: “Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Ramen Fork“
I watched Iron Man 2 with the boyfriend last weekend and the overall consensus was that it was overly self-indulgent. It seemed like the producers decided to take everything that was good about the first one and blow those things up, times infinity. Almost as if Tony Stark himself got a hold of the movie and decided to run amok with it, flamboyant personality in full swing with no checks or controls at all. Coupled with a really thin plot that tried to juggle in as much action as possible, quite a few of the characters ended up feeling like complete throwaways. As much as I enjoy watching Scarlett Johansson kick butt as mysterious/sexy red-haired agent chick, her character was really superfluous to the story. You could’ve easily taken her character out and it wouldn’t have detracted from the plot one bit. Samuel L. Jackson’s character also got no love in terms of back story. He basically appeared in the middle of the movie as the stern director of a secret government agency, drops off some goods, and then reappears for a few minutes in the end. It was a bit of a WTF? treatment. Has the comic book tropes been so ingrained in popular culture now that you can have your stereotypical kickass lady agent, stereotypical mysterious agency director, stereotypical bad rich dude who owns a big (rival) company, without having to spend any time explaining their backgrounds and motives? This was rather disappointing to see, not only because it was sloppy and lazy on the producers’ part, but also because much of the appeal for the first Iron Man was that it was NOT about your average stereotypical superhero – RDJ as Tony Stark stood in a league of his own.
But with all that said, Iron Man 2 was a fun watch – especially if you don’t have overly high expectations going in. It certainly was entertaining (cue Tony Stark in heavy-duty mechanical design mode, with his awesome equipment and robot assistants standing by) and it had quite a few “moments.” Although lots of good moments don’t always add up to a terrific movie, the first Iron Man was just so unexpectedly good that it was always going to be tough work for the sequel to measure up to the original.
So anyways, when I came across the “Heart Core” t-shirt via Topless Robot I thought – hum… yeah, despite my rant, this is still DO WANT!
P.S. Incidentally, it looks like the Australian release date for Iron Man 2 was a whole week ahead of the U.S. release date?! I had known we’d get it earlier down under but I thought it’d be just a few days’ difference. I’m just going to gloat now and feel special because most other movies usually get released (much) later in Australia than in the U.S. 